Our nation’s Catholic schools don’t, let us be honest here, always get the best of press. Secularists like to depict them, absurdly enough, as state-subsidised finishing schools for the sharp-elbowed middle classes. Meanwhile, among certain Catholics, the entire sector is roundly dismissed as having abandoned any meaningful commitment to “Catholic identity”.
As to the first point, my Benedict XVI Centre colleagues and I have already said a great deal this week. I won’t add anything here, other than to repeat the BBC’s paraphrase of our main findings: “Counting the proportion of pupils taking free school meals” – a stick with which Catholic schools are often beaten – “is an increasingly unreliable way of measuring poverty and the fairness of admissions policies”. (Though by all means see the full report here.)
