Independent Catholic education is coming under intense scrutiny, writes Isabel de Bertodano, as private schools are forced to justify their charitable status

The cost of providing independent education has soared in recent years so when the Charity Commission published its long-awaited rules on public benefit last month they were greeted with some trepidation by the private sector.

The new guidelines demand that all independent schools prove their social worth and demonstrate why they should be given charitable status. Under the rules, schools unable to meet a public-benefit test would be stripped of this status, meaning they would lose the tax breaks they currently enjoy.

Rising costs already make survival for some independent schools an exhausting exercise in balancing income and expenditure. Their registration as charities, and the tax benefits this entitles them to, play an important part in this balance. There are currently 145 Catholic independent schools in England and Wales ranging from small primaries educating just a few dozen children to major independent schools founded by large monastic institutions.

To look at how the Catholic independent sector evolved it is necessary to go back to the years following the Reformation. At that time families who wanted their children educated in Catholic surroundings were left with little choice but to send them abroad. Some of the most famous Catholic schools in England today, such as Stonyhurst and Downside, were actually founded in France, specifically to educate English children unable to obtain Catholic schooling at home.

Later, as restrictions on Catholics were eased the schools moved to England - both the Jesuits of Stonyhurst and the Benedictines of Downside arrived in 1794. Following the Emancipation Act of 1829, schools of a Catholic nature began to spring up around the country, with the aim of educating the children of Catholics, giving them a grounding in Church teaching, in the hope that they would go on to work to the advantage of the Church.

Today, Catholic schools are fully integrated into Britain's educational system, with the state funding Catholic-maintained schooling in thousands of institutions. The questions posed by the Charity Commission, therefore, raise other issues about the role of Catholic independent schools, many of which take more than half their pupils from outside the Catholic faith. In a modern system that already successfully provides good Catholic schooling free of charge, what can independent private schools offer the Church and society that is not already offered by Catholic primaries and comprehensives?

The Charity Commission recommends various ways in which schools can prove they are useful to wider society, including the setting up of partnerships with state schools and the offer of bursaries to impoverished children. However, elsewhere it is being suggested that Catholic independent schools be required to go further in their efforts to prove themselves, particularly regarding the way they benefit the Church.

Professor Richard Pring from Oxford University's Department of Education is lead director of the Nuffield Review into 14-19 education, a six-year review into British schooling. A Catholic himself, he is worried that independent Church schools may be complacent about the role they play.

"Schools should be providing an argument, demonstrating that their pupils make a major contribution to the life of the Church and contribution to society as a whole," he says. "These schools were established to enable Catholics to get an education and go to university and into the professions, at a time when it was important to ensure Catholics had a route into that world."

The system worked well 150 years ago, says Professor Pring, but he is sceptical about whether it continues to be efficient in a modern world where there are many ways of getting a Catholic education.

One suggestion he makes is that research should be undertaken into what alumni of private schools do in later life. "It is up to schools to provide statistics and look at themselves critically and the Nuffield Review will make recommendations on this," he says.

Professor Gerald Grace, director of the Centre for Research and Development in Catholic education at the Institute of Education, London University, agrees, saying that this would enable independent schools to defend themselves against criticism.

"Traditionally the only justification for Catholic public schools has been that they're seeking to win over the children of the wealthy and powerful to the service of the poor and powerless," says Professor Grace. "I think these schools need to engage in research to see if these fine ideals live up to reality."

Adrian Aylward, chairman of the Catholic Independent Schools Commission, argues that there is still a need for private Church schools that offer something that may be missing in the maintained sector. He says: "There are lots of people who aspire to have their children privately educated, partly because of the high standards but also because of the individual ethos and history. We are strong communities with a clear commitment to Catholic values, which you may get in the maintained sector but people must have a choice."

Professor Grace, who is author of Catholic Schools: Mission, Markets and Morality, agrees that choice is important, but what concerns both him and Professor Pring is the idea that by offering a handful of bursaries to children unable to afford their high fees, schools will be able to argue that they are benefiting wider society.

"There is a real issue over this," says Professor Pring. "The bursaries could allow schools to select from the local community which is not helping the maintained sector but helping to impoverish it by taking away the brightest pupils. I have a grave worry about this and it's another thing that will be mentioned in the Nuffield Review."

However, Mr Aylward defends the bursary system, saying that applicants are only examined in the same way as other prospective pupils. He is headmaster at Leweston, a private Catholic secondary school for girls in Dorset, where about 40 per cent of the pupils are Catholic. He points out that there are no maintained Catholic secondary schools in the local area, which means that a bursary can allow a child from an impoverished family to come to Leweston to obtain a Catholic education that would be otherwise unavailable to her.

"We really try to do what we can to help people," says Mr Aylward, who was formerly headmaster at Stonyhurst. "One tries to do one's best by putting together a financial package in which a family is paying something but not the full fees, according to what they can afford. But there must be proportionality in this - obviously a school like Eton can do more than Leweston, which is relatively small."

Another suggestion from the Charity Commission is that schools could set up partnerships with local schools, allowing them to share their often top-quality teaching facilities. Professors Pring and Grace are in favour of this idea and Catholic schools claim that they already do this. Mr Aylward admits there are currently no formal partnerships between Leweston and local schools but emphasises that he would not be against the idea.

The Benedictine-run Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, meanwhile, has published a glossy brochure in which it details the ways it says it can prove its public benefit. Among these is a system of partnerships with maintained schools. Although various schools are listed by Ampleforth as sharing their facilities, when approached by The Tablet three of them said the only facility they benefited from was the college swimming pool, for which they are charged a fee.

Nicola Johnson, head teacher at nearby Nawton Primary, said there was little contact between the two schools, apart from when "we go over there once a year for the Ryedale Festival of Sport, when school teams from all over North Yorkshire hold a sports day, which is great."

A spokesperson from Crayke Primary, a Church of England school near York, said the school was lent a music teacher from Ampleforth for three weeks last year to train a choir so that pupils could join a performance at the college.  Maureen Skinner, head teacher at St Hilda's Church of England Primary, also mentioned the music scheme in conjunction with a performance to be held at the college. Mrs Skinner is also head teacher at Hovingham primary school in Leeds, which uses the local authority swimming pool instead of that at Ampleforth. She investigated the possibility of Hovingham using Ampleforth's pool but decided against it because Ampleforth charged more than the local authority. "I think it's reasonable that the Charity Commission should ask independent schools like Ampleforth to do more to earn their charitable status," she said.

Information provided by the school admitted that a "nominal" fee was charged to local schools which used the swimming pool. This amounts to £1.50 per child, though two schools in the village are charged a reduced special rate.

"It is very important to note that the charges we make to the fee paying public do not cover our costs and so in providing what we do to our schools we are subsidising an already subsidised cost," said the statement.

The school also listed 25 schools which have been visited in the last three years as part of the choral outreach project.

Fr Gabriel Everitt, headmaster at Ampleforth, was unavailable for comment, but sent a statement to The Tablet in which he explained that "as a school within a Benedictine monastic community, offering public benefit has been central to our tradition for over 200 years".

"Long before such benefits became matters to be quantified and evidenced," said Fr Everitt, "Ampleforth was of its own volition building partnerships with other schools to let them draw upon the richness of its teaching and cultural capabilities, sharing its sporting and recreational resources with local people and other schools and clubs."

Such enterprises, if they are real, are of course worthwhile and could benefit all. Paul Barber, education officer in Westminster Diocese agrees that, though the questions currently being asked may make some schools uncomfortable, they will be to their long term advantage. "The list of things schools can do to prove their public benefit has a lot of potential to strengthen both the schools themselves and the Church," he says. 

It seems certain that there now needs to be a period of introspection and self-examination among Catholic independent schools if they are to challenge their critics. As Professor Grace puts it: "One wonders what is to be gained from private schools except an undesirable degree of social separation. But in a fair democracy they have to be regarded as part of the choice available to parents."

Whether providing such a choice can also be regarded as representing an act of charity remains to be seen.

Back to homepage