Is the tide of faith ebbing away and about to take our schools with it? With the falling away of Church attendance and what might be termed the “Catholic culture”, the pipeline of leadership seems to be drying up in some places. The Catholic Education Service’s Formatio initiative is doing its best to coordinate the formation of next generation of Catholic leaders, but is it too little too late?

Let’s not get too gloomy. The Holy Spirit is active in the Church and the world. When I visit Catholic schools, I meet inspirational Catholic leaders. They may not be as plentiful as in previous generations, but they seem committed to a vision for Catholic education which is more in tune with the recent teaching of the Church. 

The rise of Catholic multi academy trusts has been the most significant development in Catholic education in England (they have not been introduced in Wales) since the 1944 Education Act, when most Catholic schools joined the state system as “voluntary aided” schools. This in turn was the most significant moment in Catholic education in England and Wales since the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850, when the bishops decided to build schools, even before churches, to give the Catholic poor the dignity of an education.

Are MATs a challenge for the Church – or an opportunity? When I became the CEO of what was then one of the largest Catholic MATs in the country, I was no great advocate for academies or MATs. My commitment was to Catholic education and this particular collection of Catholic schools was in trouble. When I left, with the MAT in much better shape thanks to the efforts of many good people, I had become convinced that, if we get this right, the MAT structure will secure the future of Catholic education in this country and allow us to be the beacons of hope and social justice we are called to be, with the capacity to resolve those recruitment challenges.

Dioceses in England are now building CMATs at pace and at scale. Some dioceses are planning for CMATs of 60 schools or more. They could have 20,000 pupils and a budget of £60m. Think of a CMAT as one big school under one board of trustees/directors, which provides education on multiple sites. That is a significant civic footprint under shared governance, an opportunity to provide not just an excellent education but to contribute to the re-weaving of the social and spiritual fabric of the community, working in conjunction with the diocesan Caritas agency, Cafod and Catholic charities such as the SVP. 

As well as an opportunity there is a danger here. The “temptation”, in Catholic language, is to be drawn into the corporate model – the neoliberal model, if you like – which is driven by competition, efficiency, outsourcing and measurable outcomes above all else. (We should also acknowledge that stand-alone schools are susceptible to the same temptations: witness the exam factory ethos, the practice of off-rolling, the refusal to accommodate the needs of children with special educational needs.)  The larger a CMAT becomes, the more distant the leadership is could be from the classroom, the playground, the lunch hall. There is resentment among many teachers and staff at We also need to be mindful of the impact on morale of the very large salaries being paid to the top tier of leadership and a widening gap between the lowest and highest paid.

Only with a fierce commitment to the development of Gospel-inspired Catholic leadership, in the executive and non-executive, will these CMATs have any chance of bearing witness to our story, the Gospel of God, which begins with good news for the poor. Under such leadership, we could build in effect Catholic local authorities, which place the dignity of the person at the heart of what they do, who have a vision for society based on solidarity and the common good, living well together in our common home. The system is immature and the evidence is mixed, but I saw enough to believe that getting a grip on school improvement at scale inspired by Gospel values will allow us to fulfil our mission to form agents of change for the common good.

The one principle of Catholic Social Teaching I haven’t mentioned yet is subsidiarity. Some people get excited about subsidiarity when they think it’s their best argument not to lose control of their school in a CMAT. Subsidiarity is important, but all of the permanent principles of CST must work together: the dignity of the person, the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity. When I was CEO of a CMAT, we had one primary school in a middle-class area which was oversubscribed, musical instruments for every pupil, immaculate uniform, two TAs in every class. Twenty miles away, we had a primary school that served a local estate, the ‘east end’ if you like. Undersubscribed, an open door for the local authority to place all its challenging pupils, no musical instruments and TAs off with stress. The headteacher of the middle-class school had little interest in freeing staff or paying more to help the other school, but this is exactly the point of solidarity in a CMAT. Stronger together.

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With the 1944 Education Act and then state-funded access to higher education, working-class Catholic kids, myself included, were able to join the professions and complete a generational shift from working-class by birth to middle class by education. Did those generations of educated Catholics bring a prophetic Gospel-inspired voice into the public square? We should never underestimate the effects of holiness as a “leaven” in the world, or the impact of charitable activity, but for the sake of provocation, I’d say that mostly we just blended into the society, enjoyed getting close to power, comfortable with the fruits of our labours, unable and unwilling to speak out against the status quo. But then the point of those schools was never to create cohorts of social justice warriors, but educated Catholics and good citizens.

Vatican II’s Declaration on Christian Education began a new chapter. Young people were to be formed in the values of the Gospel, “to do their best to promote the common good” which is a lot more ambitious than just being a good citizen. There is also an acknowledgement for the first time that Catholic schools are not just for Catholics but are welcoming of all students, “especially in caring for the needs of those who are poor in the goods of this world or who are deprived of the assistance and affection of a family or who are strangers to the gift of Faith”.

Our state Catholic schools today are still, according to our admissions policies, first and foremost for Catholic children, although the numbers are tracking down. 42% of the pupils in our schools – around 344,000 – are not Catholic, and there has been a 10% decrease in the last five years in the numbers of Catholic children in our primary schools. This should not lesson lessen our commitment to Catholic schools. For Catholic pupils, the Catholic school will always provide the additional experience of catechesis, and for the less engaged Catholic pupils, or those from other faiths or none, the Catholic school offers an encounter with the Gospel and its values. It’s no longer about just educating Catholics out of poverty, but educating and forming young people – Catholic or not – with a vision for the transformation of society.

This new vision of Catholic education, like any shift in the Church, takes time to take hold. It was developed in the decades after the Council by the publications from the Congregation for Catholic Education in Rome, beginning in 1977 with the landmark document, The Catholic School. Here we find the vision of the Council elaborated in much more detail. The purpose of a Catholic education was not just to do well in life, but to serve others: “Knowledge is not be considered as a means of material prosperity and success, but as a call to serve and to be responsible for others.”

This is the Catholic version of aspiration: yes, work hard, get your best grades, learn your skills, be creative, get a job, so that you can be the person God wants you to be, formed in Gospel values with moral compass and a compassionate heart for service and solidarity, especially with people who experience poverty. In Laudato si’ Pope Francis extends our understanding of the poor to include the earth itself, degraded by rapacious consumer demand. It is the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor we must attend to, because the poorest people on earth are the most affected by a climate crisis to which they contribute the least.

The new Catholic Schools Inspection framework in England and Wales has taken up the story of this evolution and prompts us to develop an education marinated in Gospel values. To be considered an outstanding Catholic school – whether or not we will follow Ofsted’s lead and abandon single word judgements –  the leaders in a Catholic school must “embody the Church’s preferential option for the poor by ensuring that resources are consciously and effectively targeted at those in greatest need … In every one of their decisions they demonstrate an exemplary commitment to care for our common home, to the pursuit of the common good and to service of those in greatest need.”

This also applies to the curriculum. When I started teaching in Catholic schools 35 years ago, there was little explicit connection between the content of my lessons and the mission of the school, even when I was teaching An Inspector Calls. Now, in an outstanding Catholic school, the whole of the taught curriculum, with religious education at its core, must be “a coherent and compelling expression of the Catholic understanding of reality”. The Church has been encouraging us in this direction for many years. The 1977 document refers to “the art of teaching in accordance with the principles of the Gospel”. Finally, our schools have embarked on the project of making this a reality.

It's a daunting project in some respects, especially when the numbers of Catholic teachers in our schools are tracking down declining. The ”way in” for them, I’d suggest, is Catholic Social Teaching. A teacher who is not a Catholic but is willing to support the mission of a Catholic school, will understand the dignity of the human person and the common good. The challenge and opportunity is to use examples and context questions in the curriculum which bring the topic of the lesson into conversation with a Catholic vision of reality.

The final dimension of this evolution is to develop social action in the schools in ways which form agents of change. One current model of social action is summed up by James Trewby,  from Columbans UK’s Justice, Peace and Ecology Co-ordinator as, “Oh no, something terrible has happened, let’s have a cake sale.” I’m certainly not against cake sales, but it’s not the best model of formation for social justice. Over the last six decades, while we have tried to shift the dial from compassion to compassion with justice, we have not followed that up by developing the practical methods of doing justice. 

Our default is to feed the poor and not, as Helder Camara said, ask why they are hungry in the first place. Pope Francis makes it clear that this is integral to our faith in action. In a key passage in Fratelli Tutti, he says, “Solidarity means much more than engaging in sporadic acts of generosity. It means thinking and acting in terms of community. It means that the lives of all are prior to the appropriation of goods by a few. It also means combatting the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of work, land and housing, the denial of social and labour rights.”

Having largely failed to develop the tools to do justice, we turn to other partners like Citizens UK because they have a method of seeking justice and an infrastructure to deliver it, a systematic approach to training people in community organising, in understanding how to find out what’s troubling people, where is the power in the community to make change happen and how can we get into the room and round the table with power to advocate for change. We haven’t invested enough in our own model of that and so we either turn inwards and dismiss such action as political, or have to turn outwards and work with people of goodwill who have beaten this path before us. 

Using the techniques of community organising, the pupils of two Catholic schools in the east end of London, St Bonaventure’s and St Antony’s E7, campaigned for the living wage in their own communities. It started with a heartbreaking story of a boy who wrote in his school planner, “My mum is dead”. The concerned staff spoke to the boy and soon found out that what the boy meant was that because he never saw his mum, she might as well be dead. She was a single parent and worked three jobs to feed and clothe him and his siblings. This inspired the foundation of TELCO, the east London chapter of Citizens and a remarkable campaign to successfully influence the corporate employers in the city – beginning with Barclays Bank – to pay their cleaners a real living wage.

In a stand-alone Catholic school system, there are a variety of approaches to Gospel values, or virtues, or both, or neither. In a CMAT system, there is an opportunity to develop a coherent and shared approach to Gospel values and the virtues they inspire. There is the capacity for a strategic approach to talent spotting, to identify, encourage and form the next generation of Catholic leaders. With CMAT leadership rooted and grounded in the Gospel, there is an opportunity for an outstanding Catholic education to include a vision for social justice at all levels of governance, in the curriculum, and in transformative action in the community to build solidarity and justice; to form young people, in the words of St Pope John Paul II, as “witnesses and agents of peace and justice”.

This article first appeared in The Tablet on 9 November 2024. It is an abridged version of The Tablet lecture delivered at CCLA in London on 16 October 2024.