How do Catholic public schools further the Church's commitment to social justice?

[EmilyAlexandra]

The Catholic Church operates some of the most prestigious public schools in England, such as Ampleforth, Downside, Worth, Stonyhurst, Prior Park, and the Oratory, as well as girls’ schools such as St Mary’s Ascot and Rye St Antony.

These are some of the best schools in the country. They offer extraordinary opportunities which give their alumni advantages which last a lifetime. Generations of Amplefordians have been taught by Henry Wansbrough, translator of the New Jerusalem and Revised New Jerusalem Bibles. Alumni include King Letsie III of Lesotho and his father King Moshoeshoe II, the late Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg, Andrew Bertie and Matthew Festing (the only Englishmen to be grand master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta), and Cardinal Basil Hume, as well as politicians, diplomats, generals, men of letters, and international sportsmen.

Parents pay £36,486 per year at Ampleforth (plus up to £1,500 for “extras”), £35,046 at Downside, £35,220 at Worth, £35,850 at Stonyhurst (£37,350 for non-EU students and students taking the International Baccalaureate course), £31,500 at Prior Park (£33,495 for international students), £35,743 at the Oratory, £40,740 at St Mary’s Ascot, and £28,005 at Rye St Antony.

Discounts are available. For example, Ampleforth offers a 20% discount for children of UK armed forces and diplomatic personnel, but this is still £29,188.80 per year. The school also offers discounts to families with two or more children children at the school (10% for the second child, 20% for the third, 30% for the fourth), a total of £124,052.40 for a family with four children at the school.

And yes, there are always scholarships and bursaries. However, (1) the number of scholarships and bursaries available is much less than the number of children who would benefit from them, (2) most scholarships and bursaries cover only a proportion of the fees, (3) many scholarships are awarded for merit, not need, (4) parents have to know how the system works, and most ordinary parents simply don’t understand the system.

To put this in context, the median disposable household income in the UK is now £30,800 per year. Therefore, fees at most Catholic public schools are more than the entire annual income of the average British family. One should also bear in mind that the income of the average Catholic family is probably significantly less than the national average due to the geographic concentration of Catholicism and many Catholics being recent immigrants in low-paid jobs.

So you know that I am not singling out Catholicism, it’s worth noting that a majority of public schools are operated under the auspices of the Church of England, and many of these are even more expensive than the Catholic schools. I find it even more odd that there are Quaker public schools, of which the most famous, Leighton Park, charges £38,190 per year.

I just wonder how the Catholic Church, which is supposed to be committed to social justice, justifies operating public schools which are available only to the wealthiest families (with only a handful of places available to children who have both exceptional ability and parents capable of understanding the system).

 

[Tis_Bearself]

This seems to be a question specific to UK.

In the US, Catholic schools will often take less well-off students with decent academic skills, on greatly reduced tuition or even free.

Growing up I also saw many arrangements where the parent of some family in financial distress was hired by a parish as a teacher, school staff, handyman etc and then their kids got to attend the Catholic school for free.

The caveat was that most of the parish schools in those days were not academic powerhouses. They were just reasonably decent schools.

 

[stpurl]

Justifies? Oh wait, we are apparently so full of money that even though all these schools require heating, upkeep, salaries to staff, equipment, etc. that we can simply dispense with asking for money to do all the above.

And of course no Catholic in the UK can ever do anything regarding social justice unless he or she is educated in the prestigious public schools.

Look I know how frustrating it is that school expenses have gotten so high. But turning around and wailing that no Catholic student will ‘further the Church’s commitment to social justice —which is only ONE of the Church’s many commitments because Catholic schools are SO EXPENSIVE ignores the root of the matter:

All the schools in the UK and the US (and elsewhere in many countries) have become pricey because of factors that are completely outside of “The Catholic Church’, so demanding the Catholic Church ‘do something —what?—about it because Social Justice is just so incredibly important and cannot be achieved without letting every ‘bright’ student attend the schools, without any tuition if necessary, is just ridiculous.

You want to help make schools more affordable? Then get into economics and politics and administration and work on bringing down inflation and giving people a living wage and the ability to be educated with a decent education whether through home-schooling or ‘private’ or ‘public’ schools no matter whether they have a ‘name’ or not.

 

[Pattylt]

As an ignorant American, I do understand that public schools in the UK are what we in the states consider private schools. What are the typical costs for any public school in the UK and are they affordable to the average UK salaries?

Are the schools that offer free education closely on par with the public schools or is the difference night and day even comparing any low cost public schools?

Thanks for any explanations!

Edit to add…do the costs of your public schools include room and board?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I do understand that public schools in the UK are what we in the states consider private schools.

And it appears from the costs and description that this handful of schools are similar to the small group of US private “prep schools” that are understood to be for wealthy families and the occasional exceptional scholarship student. Many of them are boarding schools. In USA, those schools are usually not Catholic, but rather mainline Protestant, Quaker, or non-religious.

Catholic education in USA has always had a strong element of serving the poor because until relatively recently, Catholics in US were often poor, and even if wealthy they were often excluded to some extent from the WASP social and economic strata. We also have saints like Saint Katherine Drexel who focused on educating poor children almost exclusively.

 

[redcatholic]

Well thats maybe how it is where you live. I live in a western state. With seven children there is absolutely no path for my children to go to Catholic schools. We are not poor by any means but we homeschool with seton our kids for less than the cost of sending one to the elite catholic school system in my area. Now, I attended as a non Catholic our local Catholic high school. I received a quality education there, poor theology, but high on academics. It cost about what going to our local college would have cost.

 

[redcatholic]

I guess the thinking goes like this. We send the elite to Catholic schools and preach social justice to them, they (the elite) with the power, knowledge and money will become the leaders in politics and business and will have a strong philanthropic outlook and help the poor that way.
I guess.

 

[redcatholic]

Another reason for expense these days is the Church used to have “free” labor. Nuns who are qualified to teach school subjects are in short supply these days. And priests. Our local Catholic high school has a priest as a campus minister and no other Clergy or consecrated anywhere. Several Mormon teachers though…

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

This seems to be a question specific to UK.

Largely, but not exclusively. I was astonished to discover that Marymount School of New York charges fees of $54,125 p.a. and it is not even a boarding school!

But yes, I have a friend who attended a series of Catholic schools just outside Cleveland, OH, and as far as I can tell they seemed to cater pretty much to the local community. Her high school now charges $16,450 p.a., which is still quite a lot, but is not completely ridiculous, especially for a school that is in a very affluent suburb. Scholarships of $6,000 are offered by the Ohio Department of Education, further bringing down the cost. The school itself pays out over $3 million p.a. in tuition assistance, which I believe would cover full fees for about a quarter of students, half fees for 50% of students, etc (more if one assumes that most of those students will already be in receipt of the Department of Education scholarship). For those who are still in financial need there is further assistance available from the Diocese of Cleveland. Cleveland Central Catholic High School charges only $9,100 p.a. with 90% of families receiving assistance.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

I am not sure why your tone is so aggressive. I thought it was a perfectly reasonable question. Pope Francis famously talked about “a poor Church, for the poor”. I do not see how the Catholic Church in my country is furthering the vision of “a poor Church, for the poor” when it is operating schools like Ampleforth and St Mary’s Ascot where the fees are so high that the average doctor or lawyer would be unable to send their children there, let alone just the average person.

I am well aware that it costs money to run a school, but it does not have to cost this much, and schools do not have to be run in this way. Why, for example, does Ampleforth College have to maintain its own pack of beagles? The school which I attended had many shortcomings, but the absence of a pack of beagles was not one of them. Furthermore, is it really in the spirit of a poor Church for there to be one kind of Catholic school that is attended by the children of the very rich, another kind of Catholic school that is attended by the children of the merely middle-class, and another kind of Catholic school that is attended by the children of the poor?

And I think that you have completely missed my point. My point was not that it is only the alumni of schools like Ampleforth who are able to “do anything regarding social justice”, but that it is fundamentally unjust that the rich are able to buy their children advantages that last a lifetime.

I don’t know where you are from. If you are not from the UK, you may not appreciate the extent to which alumni of public schools are predominant in all spheres of importance in society. For example, of the 12 justices of the UK Supreme Court, only two attended state schools (Lord Burrows and Lord Lloyd-Jones, both of whom attended grammar schools). Out of 21 members of the Cabinet, 16 attended private schools. Of course, things have improved slightly since Thatcher’s first Cabinet, which included 20 ministers educated at public school (six at Eton and three at Winchester) and two at grammar school (including Thatcher, of course, the other being John Biffen).

Is it really appropriate for churches—Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Quaker, among others—to be further entrenching this kind of social injustice?

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The Catholic schools have gotten more elite since I was young, but given that the ones on the east coast are often operating in or near urban environments where people are very conscious of there being underprivileged students around, they always try to take a certain number of less wealthy students. However, a lot of people who are in the middle classes - not poor enough to fall into the “needs assistance” category but not wealthy enough to pay for all their kids to go - do tend to get shut out in some areas, especially where there isn’t a large Catholic population bearing cost burdens.

Regardless, most Catholic schools in all three of the main diocese where I spend time are nothing like what the OP describes in terms of either cost or the type of education you get. There are maybe one or two that have a longstanding reputation for great academics, but the rest of them I would categorize as just good, not great.

If you are not from the UK, you may not appreciate the extent to which alumni of public schools are predominant in all spheres of importance in society.

People from the US would generally turn a rather jaundiced eye to this sort of thing.

This sounds more like it’s some sort of class problem with the social structure of a particular country, not a problem with the Catholic Church.

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

typical costs for any public school in the UK

• Eton: £42,501
• Harrow: £42,600
• Winchester: £41,709
• Radley: £40,125
• Westminster: £41,607 boarding; £28,809 for day pupils, rising to £31,491 in the 6th form
• St Paul’s: £38,991 boarding; £25,908 day
• Dulwich: £44,346 boarding; £21,246 day
• Cheltenham Ladies’ College: £38,340 boarding, rising to £43,170 for new 6th form entrants; £25,740 day, rising to £29,280 for new 6th form entrants

This is more than the average person would earn in a year. In the case of day fees, if (for example) a family lived near to Dulwich and had two sons, they could send them both to Dulwich College e.g. if both parents were working full-time as senior doctors or lawyers and 100% one salary went on school fees. That would mean having to buy a house on the other parent’s salary, and in the area in which Dulwich College is located, a family home starts at around £1 million. To send two children to top public schools (most of which only accept boarders), you would need about £90,000 p.a. to cover fees, uniform, sports kit and equipment, school trips, music lessons, etc. Basically, you have to be a banker, partner (possibly director) in a consultancy firm, partner in a commercial law firm, a QC (top 10% of the bar), a doctor with a large private practice (e.g. surgeons practising on Harley Street), or have inherited wealth.

Are the schools that offer free education closely on par with the public schools?

There used to be, but the government abolished most of them. The UK used to have a system of grammar schools, which provided a first-rate education to children who passed an exam called the 11+. The school I went to used to be such a school long before I was even born, let alone a student there, but was turned into a comprehensive school, which was considered more egalitarian and better value for money for the government. The grammar schools had a similar emphasis on academic subjects, e.g. Greek, Latin, modern languages, and maths, and a culture of playing competitive sport, as well as traditions such as teachers (and even students) wearing gowns etc. There are a few areas of the country that still have grammar schools, such as Kent, Essex, and Birmingham, although the quality varies a lot. Somebody from an Essex grammar school may well be educated to genius level, whereas somebody from a Kent grammar school would possibly be just averagely well educated.

It has to be admitted, however, that however good the grammar schools were, they were never as good as the public schools. At an average grammar school (not one of the handful of truly brilliant ones that had probably been founded by a Tudor monarch) you might have learned French and a bit of Latin, whereas at a public school you would have learned Greek and Latin, maybe Hebrew or Arabic, and two or three foreign languages. Also, people at grammar schools never got to make the same social connections. If you send your child to a school like Eton, you’re not just buying a good education, you’re buying a brand and a set of connections to set them up for life.

 

[stpurl]

I had a lovely rebuttal but my post was too long and I couldn’t cut it (I like the iPad but it is so different from the nearly 30 years I spent on laptops and Windows).

So I’ll give the quick answer: We do not have, especially in high schools, the kind of ‘branded’ experience you do. However, we go from pre-K (age 4) to age 18 in pre-college education, and most Catholic school tuition is about 5-10 K per child per year, which can add up.

But the most important aspect is that due to a lot of factors (loss of Catholic teaching sisters, ironically to do ‘social justice work’), energy crisis of the 1970s, recession of the 1980s, school closings in the 1990s and reformation of parishes in clusters, as well as engineering changes, administration changes, need to be ‘competitive’ in salary etc., school and other educational costs skyrocketed while the basic income of people lagged and continues to lag far behind.

And again ironically, Catholic institutions in order to keep costs down and be able to engage in ‘social justice’ programs had to work with non-Catholic institutions and are forced to offer contraception and abortion services in the name of ‘helping women’ and ‘ease the burden in areas of famine’, and are forbidden to ‘force Christianity on people’ to boot.

The kind of social justice you want Catholics to keep on giving is nothing but secular humanism.

Yes, we need to get costs of necessities, including education, down across the board, pay a living wage. . .

But the whole reason we are supposed to be helping our neighbors is because we are all God’s family. And this basic tenet of Christianity is what we are NOT teaching today.

 

[po18guy]

Who teaches? Religious sisters and brothers, or lay teachers? The Church supports the religious, but must pay lay teachers. Huge cost difference. If we rebuild religious orders either with ourselves or via encouragement, the cost will be driven back down.

 

[phil19034]

Catholic education in USA has always had a strong element of serving the poor because until relatively recently, Catholics in US were often poor, and even if wealthy they were often excluded to some extent from the WASP social and economic strata. We also have saints like Saint Katherine Drexel who focused on educating poor children almost exclusively.

I think what you say here is mostly true when speaking about the parish and diocesan (aka parochial) schools. It’s also 100% true when thinking about the “Catholic Mission Schools” in urban areas that are focused on educating the poor.

However, a large % the religious order schools have turned into expensive Prep Schools. Yes, they might have scholarships, etc, but they are still often well over $15,000 + per year.

 

[phil19034]

I just wonder how the Catholic Church, which is supposed to be committed to social justice, justifies operating public schools which are available only to the wealthiest families (with only a handful of places available to children who have both exceptional ability and parents capable of understanding the system).

My experience is based on the United States. We call them “Private Catholic Schools” and they are often expensive and not under the direct control of the local bishop or parish.vs being “Catholic Parochial Schools” which are under direct control of the local pastor and Bishop.

I don’t think the elite Catholic Prep schools (aka the “Catholic Private Schools”) serve the Catholic Church very well at all. Most of them teach a watered down version of the faith. It seems to me that all they really do is teach rich kids to care about the less fortunate.

However, while some kids do wind up going on missions, etc; I think what winds up happening the most is that these kids go on to graduate saying that they learned to support XYZ heresy after attending these “Catholic” prep schools.

 

[1ke]

Terminology as I understand it:

UK state school = US public school = funded by the government, free for all students

UK independent school, also called a public school, also sometimes called a private school = US private school = no funding from state, funding comes from tuition and other private sources.

Some UK “independent schools” or “public schools” and US private schools are religiously affiliated schools and some are not.

I imagine that the tuition costs vary greatly in the UK as they do in the US dependent upon: curriculum and programs, faculty credentials and salaries, facilities, endowments, rigor, extracurriculars, boarding/non-boarding.

Since they do not receive government funding (in general, in the US that’s now a bit muddied by vouchers) then all the costs are born by the families that send their students there and/or endowment funding.

So, tuition varies widely for so many reasons.

The traditional “parish school” is usually primary school and I’m not sure if the UK has similar and what tuition is like.

It’s pretty cheap around here at the one Catholic school in the area, but facilities and programs are bare minimum.

The Catholic school my niece and nephew go to in Texas is a lot more, but has nice facilities and programs, but my sister-in-law teaches at the school so they get half-price tuition.

My other niece goes to a non-religious private school in California that caters to the Hollywood types and is heavy on arts and has ridiculous facilities and faculty with PhDs— and they pay a fortune to send her there.

So, basically YMMV.

 

[Pattylt]

Thanks for such a detailed answer…I really appreciate it!

Are the regular citizens complaining about the privileges afforded to the wealthy that seem completely unobtainable to the average citizen? If the free education provided by the state is of such lower quality, are they expressing outrage and demanding improvement?

There have always been high cost Prep schools here but they aren’t available in huge numbers but we also have numerous what we call private schools that are within reach of middle to upper middle class. Our free public education is a wide mix…some are very good and some are very poor at educating our children and there’s much uproar over the inability to have all free education be, at the least, of good to average quality. It’s partly due to funding as much education is financed through property taxes so low priced housing tends to have low funded schools and some just seems political as even some wealthy neighborhoods have schools that don’t meet basic quality standards.

I’ve never really looked deeply into how various countries fund their education. America needs to get looking as ours is all over the map…and needn’t be! How well do you think the UK does at educating the poor and middle classes?

 

[EmilyAlexandra]

@redcatholic Yes, I can certainly see the argument that if you educated the elite to a high level and instilled these values there will be a sort of “trickle-down” effect as some people believe occurs in economics.

The Church of England actually did that in a completely unashamed way (still does to some extent) with Christian camps for boys from different tiers of English public schools. Boys from the top 30 schools in the country were sent to the so-called “Bash Camps”, which took their name from the nickname of the Revd E.J.H. Nash. Nash began a separate camp for boys drawn from what he considered to be the next tier down (public schools outside the top 30) and another camp for girls. His idea was that if he could win the uppermost echelons of society for Jesus, they would take it upon themselves to transmit their faith to the lower orders.

It didn’t really work, because the sort of people Nash inspired with a zeal for Jesus weren’t really interested in reaching out to people significantly lower down the social scale from themselves. This is why evangelical Anglican churches are usually found in affluent neighbourhoods and are mostly full of rich white people. The Anglo-Catholics were much better at reaching out to the poor. Again, for this reason, if you go into the most deprived and diverse areas of London, especially around the docks on both sides of the Thames, you will find the most extraordinary Anglo-Catholic churches with congregations who are still practising their faith in a way that has remained largely unchanged since the 19th century.

Of course, this is not to say that church schools do not do a lot of good; I am sure that they do. But I honestly suspect that more good is done by the ordinary church schools which educated huge numbers of children at no cost to their parents (except what they pay in taxes and in donations to their parish). I am sure that there are perfectly nice people who have gone to these unbelievably expensive boarding schools, but I do not see much evidence of their being involved in social justice or philanthropy in any big way. You get the odd one like Frank Pakenham, the 7th earl of Longford, who went to Eton and went on to do a lot of good with his life, but that does not seem to be typical. Like I say, what I have seen more evidence of is ordinary church schools providing a decent education for children from ordinary backgrounds.

 

[jeannetherese]

Hi Emily,
The title of your thread caught my interest as it asked
“How do Catholic public schools further the Church’s commitment to social justice?”
I would answer that a Catholic public school through its teaching will form students to be followers of Christ. This formation, will inform the thoughts and actions of graduates, who by loving God with thier whole heart, soul, and all their strength will seek to keep His commandments and to care for their neighbors.