Renewing the Church-State Partnership for Catholic Education

Foreword

I was privileged to work for several years in close collaboration with Dr Margaret Buck as a colleague in the Archdiocese of Birmingham. With great effectiveness, Margaret applied the professional skills and experience she had acquired as a local authority education inspector to the development and support of Catholic education, firstly as Deputy Director of Schools and subsequently as Director, within one of the largest Catholic dioceses in England and Wales. This book is the fruit of Dr Buck’s reflection on her work in that role and others, and of her more recent academic research.

In this book, Dr Buck presents a coherent challenge to all those working in the Catholic school sector; it emanates from the fundamental question at the heart of her study: ‘In light of changes to the English national educational policy context since 2010, what should be the relationship between the Catholic Church and the English State with regard to the provision of education in diocesan Catholic schools?’

In considering the potential reframing of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the English State, the author identifies the importance of the Church having a clear and unified vision, policy and strategy for the future provision of Catholic education. Dr Buck points out the importance of the need for this vision, policy and strategy to be rooted in the ‘re-imaging internal relationships between the bishops, their diocesan services, and Catholic school leaders and governors’; a recalibration of the delicate balance between subsidiarity and solidarity that is at the heart of these ecclesial relationships in the Catholic education sector.

Dr Buck argues the need for, and the promotion of, a ‘one Church’ approach to the strategic provision of Catholic education in England in order to ‘work with unity of purpose internally, and externally engage authentically with the world’. She proposes that the Church–State partnership in the provision of schools with a religious character should be ‘renewed’ and, essentially, that the relationship in this partnership ‘needs to be critically ←vii | viii→evaluated, re-imagined, and renewed so as to be fit for purpose to serve the contemporary needs of the church and the national education service’.

Acknowledgements

My principal debts are owed to Professor John Sullivan, Emeritus Professor of Liverpool Hope University and Visiting Professor to Newman University, who was my lead supervisor during my doctoral studies.

I wish to acknowledge that Christopher and Clare, in different ways, have been motivational in this project, as have my grandchildren, Oscar, Elliot and Thomas.

Finally, I have to record my thanks to my husband, Steve, without whose support living out my whole professional life, including bringing this project to fulfilment, would not have been remotely possible.

Abbreviations

Key Terms

It is very important to be clear what is meant when the word ‘church’ is used, since the term may be variously interpreted or misunderstood. The political and regulatory world of government is inclined to treat it as an umbrella term to cover various entities as if they are all one and the same body. The word ‘church’ may be used at a global, national and local level. When I am referring to all the people in the world that God gathers together in the name of Jesus Christ, I will use the word ‘Church’ with a capital ‘c’. The ‘Roman Catholic Church’ means the world-wide Catholic faithful in full communion with Rome under the authority of the pope. The term ‘Catholic Church’ is used to refer to the ecclesial entity that is the whole of the English Catholic faithful, both clergy and laity. The ‘Catholic hierarchy’ means the bishops, priests and deacons. The ‘Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales’ (CBCEW) is the formal assembly of bishops of both countries. The ‘Catholic Education Service’ functions as the agent of the CBCEW with government and other national bodies (CES, 2016a; Barber, 2017). When talking about the national Catholic Church in England, for the sake of brevity I may refer to ‘the church’, with a small ‘c’. I use the term ‘the local church’ to mean ‘the diocese’. A diocese is led by its diocesan bishop with canonical authority over the faithful and the provision of education for baptised Catholic children. ‘Diocesan trustees’ are the trustees of a diocese as a charitable organisation in law. Reference is made to the ‘diocesan schools commission’ or the ‘diocesan education service’, which functions as the agent of the bishop in all matters to do with schools. The term ‘diocesan authorities’ implies the diocesan education service (or diocesan schools commission), together with the bishop and trustees. In canon law, a diocese has authority in church matters and episcopal government similar to the role of the local authority in secular matters and local government in civil law (Vatican, 1983).

An ‘academy’ is a state-funded independent school, which is funded directly from central government. Academies may be run as single academies, or more likely an academy is part of what may be referred to in some dioceses as a multi-academy company, a MAC, or a multi-academy trust, a MAT; it is worth clarifying the use of these terms. A charitable trust is set up with a trust deed as the constituting document. A charitable company limited by guarantee is governed by memorandum and articles of association. A charitable trust and a charitable company are equally charities, ←xiv | xv→but they each have a different legal status and structure. With respect to either structure, general charity law applies. Directors of a charitable company are also subject to the Companies Acts, the requirements of company law and the Charity Commission. Whether the DfE or the individual diocese or the Catholic Education Service uses the terminology ‘multi-academy company’ or ‘multi-academy trust’ or ‘multi-academy trust company’, if the legal entity that caters for academy conversion is established with articles of association it is a charitable company limited by guarantee, not a trust. Dioceses (and religious orders) already have trusts in place and their schools are assets of the said trusts. When the Birmingham diocese reached agreement with the DfE on their approach to academy conversion, the term ‘multi-academy company/MAC’ was deliberately employed in the diocesan legal documents for conversion (i.e. the diocesan model Memorandum and Articles of Association) used to set up each of the multi-academy companies to stress the company status, and to avoid confusion with diocesan trust status. All English multi-academy conversions involve the use of articles of association, therefore are legally companies.