On reading Tales out of School: Recollections of Ex-Covent-School Girls, published by the Pastoral Research Centre Trust two thoughts occurred to me: a. that you only realise how important something is when it is no longer there and b. you shouldn’t trust everything you read in the newspapers. They are clichés, obviously, but they matter.
These recollections of 40 women, who attended convent schools between the 1930s and the 1970s in response to a letter to The Tablet of 18 February 2012, make fascinating reading – but as historical documents. This is because almost all the convent schools they describe have either closed altogether or have been taken over by lay Catholic management and staff, so have changed their status. My own old school is a case in point; once a convent boarding school it is now a day Catholic school. The nuns have long gone.
