23rd March 2007
Dear Headteacher
ATL’s Position Paper on Faith Schools
On 14th March 2007 ATL published a position paper on “faith schools”. You may also know that the NUT has a “faith schools” working party in place.
ATL’s paper has attracted a lot of media attention and I have been vigorously pursuing a meeting with Dr. Mary Bousted, the union’s General Secretary. Unfortunately, ATL has not been able to accept any of the dates that I have offered for this urgent meeting before Easter. They have now offered some dates after Easter and their forthcoming conference and I hope that this will be confirmed as soon as possible. Whilst I had hoped that I would have had a conversation with ATL before writing to you, I feel that the matters are so important that I want to ask you to bring issues to the attention of your staff before Easter and, therefore, to please publish this letter in your staff room.
The Church is rightly proud of its Catholic schools and their staff and what they contribute to society. The 35,000 teaching staff are at the heart of this success and I am deeply dismayed that a professional association appears to have disregarded this in publishing a paper in which it makes so many misleading and inaccurate statements about Church schools. I would suggest that this is insulting to those members who work in our Catholic schools, in fact I have been receiving correspondence from Catholic ATL members outlining their feelings to this effect, and I hope that they will take matters up directly with their professional associations. ATL’s Faith Schools Position Paper (March 2007) can be accessed via www.atl.org.uk.
Catholic schools are accountable to the Government in the same way as any maintained school, as well as to the Church. This can be seen clearly in Ofsted’s published reports and also in the Section 48 reports that we publish, through the CES and elsewhere on the religious education and worship in each school. We want people to know as much as possible about the RE in our schools and to be able to read about it through these reports. Not only are Catholic parents taxpayers like anyone else but as members of the Church they are also contributors to the additional 10% that the Church pays towards capital building costs for our schools.
Data collected by Ofsted and DfES clearly shows that Catholic schools are ethnically very diverse, socially mixed (for example free school meal levels mirror national averages) and our admission arrangements are fair, objective and well publicised. It is also the case nationally that 30% of pupils in Catholic schools are from backgrounds other than Catholic. Ofsted figures show that on measures of pupil attitudes, behaviour and respect for others, Catholic schools do better than other schools, particularly in the latter category. Despite all this ATL asks for us to be more accountable, it claims that our successes are due to selective admissions arrangements and it suggests that our finding should ‘be earned through evidence of socially just educational practices’.
Our schools have been in the vanguard of seeking to promote community cohesion and I asked Education Minister Lord Adonis early in autumn 2006 to make this part of Ofsted’s school inspection criteria; a point which was later raised in the House of Lords and included in the Education and Inspections Act. I have surveyed all our schools to review current practice in promoting community cohesion. The data from the first 300 replies makes it very clear, as you would expect, that there is much good practice. We will be doing more on this front to prompt Government into publicising the criteria that they will use for community cohesion criteria in inspections. We are keen to work across the education sector to play our part in ensuring that all schools view the promotion of community cohesion as a high priority and one on which they will be evaluated with due rigour.
If your school has not yet replied to the community cohesion survey or would like a further copy please do not hesitate to contact me via Laura McCann e: lmccann@cesew.org.uk t: 0207 901 4854.
Finally, I would again urge you to be in contact with your professional association whether ATL, NUT or others in order to make your voice clearly heard on the issue of “faith schools”. I would also invite you to share your thoughts with the CES as well as with your diocese. Please do not hesitate to contact me. Do print out this letter for your staff notice-board and I ask that you share it with your Chair of Governors so that they are aware of our response as they read this debate in the media.
May I also take this opportunity to thank you and all your staff for the invaluable role that you play in providing education in a Catholic setting to develop the God given talents of each pupil, irrespective of their background, and to hold out to society the promise of well formed citizens for the future.
Kind regards
Yours sincerely
Oona Stannard
Chief Executive and Director | 
