The head of the Catholic Education Service (CES) in England and Wales, Bishop Malcolm 
McMahon, has said that Catholic schools feel under constant attack from critics of faith-based education.
Bishop McMahon, said that the secularists, teachers’ leaders and their “friends in parliament” who call for the abolition of faith schools received more publicity than they deserve.
This was in spite of the success and popularity of faith schools, he said.
His words came as the CES published new research [1] showing that Catholic state schools consistently outperform state primary and secondaries for exam results, discipline and maintaining low truancy rates.
Bishop McMahon said the discussion about whether faith schools should receive state funding had been continuing “for a very long time”.
He described the National Secular Society, which has been at the forefront of criticism, as “quite a small organisation but it is very noisy and they have some friends in Parliament”.
“You always feel a little bit got at, because that is the nature of these groups,” Bishop McMahon said. “They get more publicity than their numbers deserve. When you ask parents, they want their children to go to faith schools. That is why we are well supported.
“The Catholic sector makes an enormous contribution to our society both in terms of its mainstream work which is education, but also in terms of the spin-offs, the social cohesion, the contribution to the community, and therefore my conclusion is that it is a very good way of spending taxpayers’ money.”
A study produced by the CES showed that in every category assessed by government inspectors, the 2,000 Catholic schools in England and Wales achieved better results than the average for all state-funded institutions.
Inspectors judged 73% of Catholic secondary schools to be “good” or “outstanding” overall, compared to an average of 60% for all secondaries nationally. Among Catholic primary schools, 74% were rated good or outstanding, higher than the average of 66% across the country.
Standards of classroom discipline and moral development among pupils were also far better in Catholic schools than typical state schools.
The research found that 44% of Catholic secondary schools were rated “outstanding” for pupils’ behaviour, compared to a national average of 24%.
Despite claims from opponents that faith schools increase ethnic and religious segregation, Ofsted also rated Catholic schools highly for promoting “community cohesion”.
Presenting the findings, Peter Irvine, author of the research, said: “It is quite striking and surprising that on every single criterion from (age) five to 16, Catholic schools came out more strongly. That is rather an extreme statement to make but it is true.”
Last November, a campaign was launched with the backing of teachers’ and headteachers’ unions to abolish the law forcing schools to hold a daily Christian assembly. In recent years, teachers’ unions have passed votes calling for faith schools to be abolished.
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: “It is scandalous that publicly-funded schools should be able to deny access to pupils not of the faith, and it may also be illegal to deny employment to teachers on such grounds, as many of them do.
“Self-serving opposition will not prevent us from raising these issues in the public arena.”