Launch of:
Quality and Performance: A Survey of Education in Catholic Schools
Today the chairman of the CES, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, together with Oona Stannard the Chief Executive and Peter Irvine, Education Consultant, met journalists form the national and educational press to launch the publication of Quality and Performance: A Survey of Education in Catholic Schools.
The Archbishop and Oona Stannard welcomed the survey as debunking myths about Catholic schools and instead showing their ethnic diversity, their social match with the national profile, and the success of the schools in forming well rounded pupils, ready to be good citizens.
Ms Stannard pointed out that the statistics in the survey were exclusively from Ofsted and represented an objective analysis. She emphasised the inclusive nature of Catholic schools and the very positive conclusions about the involvement of parents in their children’s learning at all levels, and the good governance in Catholic schools. She described this as evidence of the way in which the triangle of home, school and parish works together to support Catholic education.
Mr Irvine outlined the findings about pupils’ attainment. Not only were standards generally higher in Catholic schools, the edge of Catholic schools over other schools was greater as levels of disadvantage increased.
Archbishop Nichols drew attention to the impact of Catholic schools on pupils’ personal development. In particular, in terms of self-knowledge and spiritual awareness, a far higher proportion of Catholic schools achieved excellent or very good judgements in Ofsted reports. Asked how Catholic schools achieve so well, the archbishop said that they have a shared and coherent vision of what it means to be a human being. Far from being a problem, Catholic schools showed the way to solutions to the challenge of living in a complex multicultural society.
The speakers wished to avoid complacence: the survey suggested issues that needed to be addressed, and action was already in train to do this. The breadth of the curriculum in the 14-19 age range was one such issue; the apparent slight shortfall in examination results at 18 in the schools was another. In this context, the excellent performance of sixth from colleges was a counterbalance to any simplistic judgement.
Media Present:
- Simon Caldwell, Catholic Herald
- Graeme Paton, Times Educational Supplement
- Sarah Cassidy, The Independent
- Paul Donovan, The Universe
- Sarah Harris, The Daily Mail
(Friday, 13th October 2006)
END.
Quality and Performance: A Survey of Education in Catholic Schools
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