A Christian school in the Catholic tradition

Our experience suggests that our families today, and young people in general, take a view of faith that is open minded, inclusive, and accepting of a wide range of differences. This decision to become a Christian school is one which is meeting our students where they are today and where we believe they will be in the future. Our school’s new status, as a Christian school in the Catholic tradition, is one which acknowledges and honours its past, but equally looks to its future.

A copy of the Headmaster’s Assembly to students, notifying them of this decision, can be found here.

Discussions and debates around Prior Park’s relationship with the Catholic Church have been ongoing for the last four years. The first significant discussion on this matter began in 2020, with the topic being revisited many times by Trustees and the Executive over the subsequent years. This is not a decision which was reached in weeks or months, it has been considered and debated extensively over half a decade.

Even with a full school roll, excellent results, and a strong reputation, the pressures that exist on independent schools are real and growing. Our school does not operate significant waiting lists and every year we must ensure that we recruit excellent, new, students to be able to keep offering our high standard of education. This means that we are subject to the realities of a competitive marketplace. Unlike some schools, Prior Park does not enjoy the luxury of healthy endowments, or of a wide range of benefactors. We rely upon being the most attractive and appealing school that we can be.

The high quality and wide variety of our educational offering, the excellence of our pastoral care, and the wide breadth of our co-curricular offerings are vital elements of our offering that allows us to thrive. The sad truth today though is that our Catholicism, and the resultant regulatory restrictions that it brings as to how we can operate, acts as a barrier to many students coming to us. This decision has been under consideration for many years, and long predates the introduction of VAT on fees. However, the pressure that a tax on education brings to schools like ours has undoubtedly sharpened our focus. Much like this year’s inspection by the Catholic Schools Inspectorate, VAT helped to catalyse a decision that has been a long while in the gestation.

In recent years, our school community has undoubtedly become more diverse and the school has rightly attempted to become more inclusive. Welcoming students and teachers of different backgrounds and sexual orientations is undoubtedly harder when under the authority of the Catholic Church. Student led celebrations of movements such as ‘Pride’, have been viewed as contrary to the teachings of the Church and the guidance of the Diocese.

The school has been told it should censor student led publications if they expressed a view contrary to Catholic teaching. We are a family of schools which talks about giving young people, ‘room to be me’. This is increasingly hard as the Catholic Church’s teachings on many issues runs so counter to a society which is increasingly accepting and encouraging of individual’s varying identities.

The Catholic Church is seen by many as homophobic. This is despite much evidence to the contrary. The Church identifies, ‘the dignity of all people and does not define or label them in terms of their sexual orientation.*’ However, even Pope Francis recognises that, ‘The enemy of mercifulness is self-righteousness, the disease of religious folk “who live attached to the letter of the law but who neglect love ...who only know how to close doors and draw boundaries”, their approach, sadly, is “repeated throughout the long history of the Church”’**.

As the Pope recognises, the perception, and often the experience, of many, remains that Catholicism is homophobic. Many alumni who are gay have shared how difficult they found their education at the College – both historically and relatively recently. They experienced those closed doors and drawn boundaries that Francis outlines above.

In terms of doctrine, the Church continues to teach that homosexuals live ‘contrary to the natural law’, are ‘intrinsically disordered’ and engage in ‘acts of grave depravity’***. This undoubtedly sits at odds with how we treat our young people, and how we talk to them about who they intrinsically are. As stated though, this has led to difficulties with those who take a different view of how we should address those issues.

It is heartening though that these people are very far from the majority, even within the United Kingdom’s Catholic community. A good example of this would be the percentage of UK Catholics who support the issue of gay marriage – which stands at 78%, with 86% of UK Catholics saying that society should be accepting of homosexuality****. This decision was not taken for these sorts of reasons alone, but they were a definite consideration that the Trustees and the Executive reflected upon.

* A note on the teaching of the Catholic Church concerning homosexuality, Cardinal Basil Hume
** Pope Francis – The Name of God is Mercy, 2016
*** Catechism of the Catholic Church (usccb.org), p 566
**** Catholics' views of gay marriage around the world | Pew Research Center
 

An independent school lives and dies by its academic results, and we feel that the school will better serve its young people by offering them a wider range of academic choice. The strictures of the Bishops’ Conference and the Catholic Education Service in relation to the compulsory nature of Theology at GCSE mean that the range of choice for our students is more limited than in any other independent school in Bath. This does not allow for us to be as attractive to as wide a range of families as we wish to be. Nor does it allow our students to be as successful, in academic terms as they would be if they were examined in subjects they have opted for.

In short, no. However, the inspection brought some long-standing issues into sharper focus and encouraged our school to consider which option would be best for our young people and the future success of our school. This inspection result, which only addressed our approach to Religious Education and Catholic observance, acted as a catalyst for the decision and its timing. However, it was in no way a driver of that decision. On reflection, we concluded that it would be against the interests of the Trust and the pupils we serve to attempt to become compliant. This conclusion resulted in this forward-looking decision.

In a world of falling church attendances, it is perhaps unsurprising that there appears to be a greater level of expectation by the Catholic Church’s hierarchy for its Catholic schools to do the job of bringing young people to ‘the faith’ that Churches and families have historically accomplished. However, we know that parents choose Prior Park, and that students enjoy Prior Park, for a variety of reasons. We are not only chosen because we are a Catholic school, and we must, and do, always work hard to avoid alienating any of our students and families who are not Catholic.

This new Catholic Inspection framework, active for the past two years, makes no allowances for the fact that Prior Park, whilst a Catholic School, is also an Independent School. It makes no allowance for the fact that many of our families choose our school for different reasons than parents may choose a state maintained Catholic school for their child. Instead, the Inspection framework is the same for all Catholic schools, whether they have 100% practising Catholic students and staff, or 0% practising Catholics. The current faith makeup of Prior Park College is under 20% Catholic students. We are very much a school of all faiths and none. We pride ourselves on not proselytising to our young people, but instead in encouraging them to engage with faith and spirituality on their own terms. We want them to live our school’s values which, whilst underpinned by our Christian, Catholic, tradition, we see as accessible to all young people. More details on the school’s response to February’s inspection can be found here.

Essentially, that our school will step away from the educational restrictions that exist upon all Catholic schools in terms of how they must construct their curricula. We believe that choice and the freedom to exercise that choice in the classroom is the best way to serve our young people today.

Prior Park has a long and proud history as a place of Catholic education. Our mission talks of a community with love for the young people we serve at our heart. It is a mission drawn from our proud Catholic heritage, and one that we live daily. We will continue to honour our Catholic tradition by offering Mass, wherever possible, in our beautiful chapel every Sunday during term time. We hope to continue to have whole school Masses each term, and to honour Holy Days of Obligation. We will continue to employ a Lay Chaplain. We will continue to prepare our young people for the Sacraments. We will continue to pray together as a school. We will continue to have whole school services for Advent and Lent. We will continue to teach Theology, though now as an elective subject. We will be able to teach it with the freedom to explore a wider range of topics, delivering them in a way which fits the wide range of nationalities and cultures in our school. Most importantly, our ethos with love for the young people we exist to serve, grounded in our Catholic tradition, will remain at our core.

Our Catholic students, along with all our students of faith, will be supported in their journeys. For Catholics, this will come through the school’s ongoing commitment to doing all we can to observe the Catholic liturgy throughout the academic year.

This change will mean that the College will be conducting a full curriculum review over the coming months. One of the key questions which will be explored in this review is the position of Theology throughout the school. Some decisions which help to frame these questions have already been made. Notably, that our current Form Four (Year 9) students will no longer have to sit Theology as a compulsory GCSE subject when they enter the Lower Fifth (Year 10). We will be looking at developing an examination curriculum centred on choice over the coming months. Alongside that focus, we will look at the place that Theology (Religious Education) should have for all students throughout our school, in line with national curriculum guidance and our proud Catholic heritage.

Prior Park College has close historic ties with the Diocese of Clifton. Many former Bishops of Clifton have resided at the College, and some were even buried here. The College has a proud place in the history of the Diocese, just as the birth of the Diocese has a proud place in the history of the College. We enjoyed excellent relationships with many of our local Catholic priests and we look forward to continuing to welcome them to celebrate Mass with us as a community. We enjoy excellent relationships with other local Catholic schools in the Diocese. We will look to continue to work with these friends over the coming years. We enjoyed excellent relationships with Bishop Declan Lang, the recently retired Bishop of Clifton. We look forward to forging a collaborative, and welcoming relationship with his recent successor, Bishop Bosco MacDonald.

There has been an overwhelmingly supportive response from our community. We have been delighted by this level of support and engagement with such an important issue. Many current students have spoken to their teachers about the change and what it means for the school and for them. Our current parents have been near unanimous in their support of the change to our designation. The majority of the comments from our vibrant and engaged alumni community have been very happy with the change and have recognised it as a positive and inclusive step forward for the College. A few members of our wider community have expressed serious concern and sadness at the change to our designation. Some have been shocked and have struggled to understand that the Trust believes that it is working in the best interests of today’s Prior Park families. Whilst we accept that this is a decision which will cause some upset amongst a few members of our wider community, the Trustees and Executive are content that the decision was correctly considered and that all due process was properly adhered to.

As above, approximately 18% of our student body identify as Catholic. That equates to roughly 100 students studying at Prior Park from Catholic communities across the globe. Whilst at school, all students worship together. We do not know, and would never ask, how many of these 100 are what some people might describe as practicing Catholics. Our school does not require any evidence of religious attendance as a condition of our entry.

In short, no. Our idyllic junior school, The Paragon, came into our group as a Christian school and will remain a Christian school within a Christian Educational Trust. This decision means our family of schools are now better aligned, and so able to offer a more coherent educational experience for those very many families who stay in that family for the entirety of their education.

No. We are certainly forward looking. We are excited about moving towards a new way of educating within our proud Catholic tradition. We are excited to be able to honour our traditions as a Catholic school as much we are possibly can. Many parents and students both enjoy and respect these traditions, whilst equally welcoming the greater level of freedom within our education provision that we are moving to.

With 18% Catholic students at the College, it is clear that we are a school where Catholics are welcome. With a large number of Christian students, as well as Muslim and Jewish families as part of our community, it is equally clear that we are a school for all faiths and none. Our staff body is a talented and committed group of educators. We recruit the best teachers to educate our young people, some of whom are Catholic, but most of whom are not. This is a trend reflected in the education sector as a whole*. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of our current school community are entirely happy and satisfied with the change that the Trustees and Executive have made. That change has been made in the best interests of our students and their education.

* Full article: Headteachers in Catholic schools in England: contemporary challenges. A follow-up research study: part 2 (tandfonline.com)

We intend for our beautiful Chapel to remain as a properly consecrated, Roman Catholic, Church. Ultimately, that decision is one lies within the purlieu of the Diocese of Clifton. As a school, we would encourage all to observe the committed and vibrant celebrations of Catholic Mass that takes place there weekly during term time as we continue to honour our Catholic tradition and worship according to the Roman Catholic liturgy.

Our primary legal, charitable object is, ‘to provide for the advancement of education… for… children of either or both sexes of the Roman Catholic religion with other Christian children, with or without non-Christian children.’

We believe that our decision is entirely compliant with our objects. Indeed, we would go further and say that our courageous and forward-thinking decision is the best way of furthering all our charitable objects, both now and into the future. We will continue to educate all young people who wish to be educated at Prior Park, of all faiths and none. We will continue to provide for charitable works. We will continue to honour our proud Catholic heritage.