‘Catholic schools are clearly incubators of social values and of motivation towards the common good’, says Archbishop

CES launches new community cohesion guidance

The Catholic Education Service (CES) has launched new preliminary guidance for all Catholic schools in England on the statutory duty to promote community cohesion, ahead of September 2008 when this duty will be inspected by Ofsted.  The CES welcomes this duty and believes that the guidance is a timely document, which taps into the current debate on community cohesion.  The document emphasises the diversity of Catholic education and examines how Catholic schools engage with the issue of community cohesion now and in the future. 

This CES guidance is clear: Promoting community cohesion is neither new to us, nor an optional extra.  Catholic schools enhance their Catholic identity by committing themselves to working for a more cohesive world.

Catholic Schools and Community Cohesion: CES Guidance asks questions such as What does community cohesion mean? and What are Catholic schools doing already?  It highlights the CES’ finding that, while issues of race are important, Catholic schools view community cohesion as a far broader spectrum encompassing (but not limited to) such activities as links with other schools, interfaith dialogue, engagement with a variety of age groups in the community and environmental projects. 

The document explores what community cohesion means in the Catholic context, illustrates through case studies existing practice in a variety of Catholic schools and exemplifies existing frameworks for inspection.  It shows that the inspections of religious education and the Catholic life of a school (known as section 48 inspections) are ahead of the game in explicitly evaluating and reporting on community cohesion.

Catholic schools are always looking for opportunities to improve their contribution to social harmony in the different communities which they serve, whether on the local, national or global level.  Oona Stannard, CES Chief Executive and Director of the CES, said: ‘If we don’t define ourselves, others will do it for us.  We have to be transparent about what a Catholic education has to offer the whole community because if we don’t make it apparent others will make presumptions.  This simple document helps us to share what is good so that we can live up to the goal of learning about one another, learning from one another and learning with one another.’

St John Vianney Catholic Primary School and Children’s Centre in Hartlepool features in the guidance and Head teacher John Hardy illustrates the way in which Catholic education serves his local community: ‘As more members of the community begin to visit our facilities, the traditional barriers begin to dissolve and the mission of the Catholic Church at the service of the entire community, especially responsive to the most marginalised and standing in solidarity with the poorest, is beginning to be realised.

The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham, has made it clear that Catholic schools contribute to community cohesion both in terms of their diversity and their activities: ‘Catholic schools are clearly incubators of social values and of motivation towards the common good.  Within schools, as the evidence clearly suggests, pupils learn both principles and the practice of seeking the good of others, intelligent, moral discourse about the ways the good is to be discerned and an appreciation of the faith and religious truths of the world around them.  These are precisely the abilities that citizens of the future will require.’

ENDS

Notes:

• Every Catholic school in England and Wales will receive a free copy of Catholic Schools and Community Cohesion: CES Guidance.  Further copies are available from the CES priced at £7 and the document will be available on the CES website www.cesew.org.uk.
• The Education and Inspections Act 2006 – Section 38(1) introduced the duty on governing bodies to promote community cohesion.
• Independent empirical data from Ofsted shows that students in Catholic schools do better in terms of behaviour, social, moral and spiritual development and parental involvement in the school.  It also shows that Catholic schools are more ethnically diverse than other schools: in primary schools the figure is 18.2% compared with 16.7% and 20% compared with 15.6% at secondary level (2005).  The number of pupils in Catholic schools eligible for free school meals is in line with other schools in England and Wales.  Higher proportions of RC schools were assessed as excellent or very good by Ofsted: 60% of primary schools (compared to 51% nationally); 65% secondary schools (compared to 54%).  (See Quality and Performance: A Survey of Education in Catholic Schools, 2006 http://www.cesew.org.uk/temp/QualityspamspPerformancesp-spAspSurveyspofspCatholicspSchools.pdf).
• The Catholic Church welcomes students of other faiths or none where places are available: overall about 30% of places in Catholic schools are occupied by pupils who are not Catholic.
• St Bonaventure’s Catholic School in the London Borough of Newham features in the CES guidance and was mentioned last week (week commencing 4^th February 2008) in a speech by Schools Minister Andrew Adonis: There are plenty of schools with mixed intakes which achieve outstanding results. Take for example St Bonaventure's, a Catholic school in Newham in the bottom 5% of all schools in terms of the social deprivation of its intake. In the early 1990s just 20% of the pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs in any subject. It was the kind of school that would be used to argue that social background is an insurmountable barrier to excellence. But the school did surmount that barrier. By summer 2000 62% of pupils achieved five or more good GCSEs and by 2007 that figure stood at 81%, and 64% including English and Maths…  (Andrew Adonis, Academies and Social Mobility, 7^th February 2008 http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/speeches/latest.cfm).

For more information and to purchase further copies of Catholic Schools and Community Cohesion: CES Guidance please contact Laura McCann, Policy and Briefing Officer t: 0207 901 4854 e: lmccann@cesew.org.uk w: www.cesew.org.uk.