The Decline of Catholic Identity in Modern Schools

When Is a Catholic School No Longer Catholic?

The question is not rhetorical. In recent years, what were once recognisably Catholic schools—places where the Faith shaped the curriculum, the community, and the moral atmosphere—have increasingly become indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. The recent reflection by Roger Watson in The Catholic Herald captures the crisis in stark statistical terms, yet beneath the data lies a deeper question of identity: whether a school can still claim the name “Catholic” when its soul has been quietly replaced by inclusivity rhetoric and state conformity.

The Numbers Behind the Crisis
Between 2003 and 2023, the proportion of Catholic teachers in England’s Catholic primary schools fell from 81 % to 48 %, and in secondary schools from 54 % to 44 %. Over the same two decades, Catholic pupils declined from 80 % to 58 %.¹ These figures, drawn from the Catholic Education Service, mirror a demographic reality: fewer practising Catholics, smaller families, and declining Mass attendance.²

Catholic schools, once intended as a bulwark of faith-formation, are now heavily populated by non-Catholics—including some 26,000 Muslim pupils across England and Wales.³ At face value, this diversity may be hailed as a sign of openness; in truth, it reveals a retreat from mission. Schools that once formed future generations of Catholics now serve as general-purpose institutions with a nominal Catholic label.

A Crisis of Witness and Formation
The Church’s magisterium has long insisted that Catholic education is not merely about instruction but formation in truth. Divini Illius Magistri (Pius XI, 1929) defined education as the “formation of man in the end for which he was created,” warning that secularised instruction without reference to God would “tear from the heart of youth the very roots of life.”⁴ Similarly, Gravissimum Educationis (Vatican II, 1965) reaffirmed that Catholic schools must “create for the school community a special atmosphere animated by the Gospel spirit of freedom and charity.”⁵

When teachers no longer profess the faith, when religious education is delivered by those who do not believe what they teach, and when prayer and sacrament are displaced by assemblies on inclusivity and mental health awareness, the Gospel spirit evaporates. Indeed, a recent Nuntiatoria analysis observed that more than half of Religious Studies teachers in English secondary schools deliver the subject as a secondary responsibility, warning that “the loss of religious specialists threatens to undermine social cohesion and deprives students of moral literacy.”⁶

Such a crisis is not merely educational but civilisational. When children are denied the intellectual tools to understand transcendence, sin, and virtue, they are also denied the moral coherence upon which a humane society depends.

The Illusion of Inclusivity
Modern diocesan education documents now celebrate “diversity” and “openness” as virtues in themselves, illustrated with multicultural imagery but devoid of doctrinal substance. As Nuntiatoria noted in “Quiet Conformity,” the new RSHE mandates recast the aims of education from moral formation to emotional affirmation, replacing the language of sin and redemption with “self-esteem and self-expression.”⁷

Inclusivity becomes a euphemism for doctrinal surrender. Schools are told to “affirm identity,” but not to form conscience. The crucifix remains on the wall, but it has become a decoration rather than a declaration. The Catechism teaches that “the right to education is the right to be instructed in the truth,” yet truth is now treated as an imposition rather than a liberation.

The situation has been compounded by the 2025 statutory guidance on Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), which compels schools with a religious character to integrate ideological content under the pretext of “wellbeing.” Catholic teaching may be mentioned only insofar as it “reflects the law,” thereby subordinating revelation to regulation.⁸ In practice, this has normalised what the Church condemns, while marginalising what she proclaims.

The State and the Faith
As voluntary-aided institutions, most Catholic schools in the UK receive public funding, and with that funding comes control. The Department for Education’s “British values” directives, Ofsted’s frameworks, and equality legislation all function as instruments of cultural re-engineering.⁹

The Nuntiatoria exposé “A Primer for Catholic Parents” warned that state-defined “inclusive” sex education “crosses the line from education to indoctrination,” replacing the virtue of chastity with a “therapeutic model of consent.”¹⁰ Likewise, “The Hidden Digital Identifier” revealed how the proposed Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill seeks to merge pastoral and surveillance functions, creating a “state-defined child” whose wellbeing is measured by conformity to progressive norms.¹¹

In such a system, Catholic schools are tolerated only insofar as they become instruments of the same ideology. When state guidelines override Catholic teaching on marriage, sexuality, or the sanctity of life, the Church faces a choice: fidelity or funding. Too often, the latter prevails.

Safeguarding or Secularisation?
Under the banner of “safeguarding,” a new moral regime has emerged—one that regards traditional religious formation as a potential threat. The NHS Sussex controversy, reported earlier this year, showed how “safeguarding frameworks” have been weaponised to promote gender ideology in the name of child welfare.¹² Catholic educators who dissent from this ideology are treated as non-compliant rather than conscientious.

A system that once sought to protect children from moral harm now exposes them to it. As long as Catholic schools depend on such frameworks, they risk being assimilated to a secular order fundamentally at odds with the Faith.

Possible Remedies—and Their Limits
Watson proposes pragmatic solutions: consolidating schools, maintaining existing premises but under Catholic headship; closing schools while offering religious education elsewhere; or forming joint Anglican-Roman Catholic institutions.¹³ Yet each option merely manages decline rather than reversing it.

The deeper renewal must begin in the home and parish, not the bureaucracy. Parents, clergy, and faithful teachers must rediscover that Catholic education is an apostolate, not a career path. The family remains the “first school of virtue,” as Familiaris Consortio affirms. Without that foundation, no institutional reform can sustain Catholic life.

A new generation of independent Catholic academies—small, classical, and confessional—offers a glimpse of hope. Freed from state interference, they form children not merely to pass exams but to pursue holiness. These schools demonstrate that excellence and orthodoxy can coexist, that a Catholic ethos is not a relic but a renaissance.

The Test of Authenticity
What makes a school Catholic is not its funding model, its branding, or its admissions policy. A Catholic school exists to bring children to Christ through truth and grace. When that mission is diluted, the institution ceases to be Catholic—no matter what its crest proclaims.

The Church in Britain stands at a crossroads: she can continue operating state schools that evangelise no one, or she can rebuild smaller, faithful communities where Christ is truly at the centre. The time for polite concern, as Watson rightly concludes, has indeed passed.

Catholic Education Service, Digest of 2023 Schools Census Data, CES England & Wales, 2024.
Office for National Statistics, Religious Affiliation in England and Wales: Census 2021, ONS, 2022.
Catholic Education Service, Annual Report 2023, CES, 2023.
Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, §§22-23 (1929).
Second Vatican Council, Gravissimum Educationis, §8 (1965).
Nuntiatoria, “A Crisis in Religious Education: The Decline of Specialists and the Threat to Social Cohesion,” 22 Aug 2025.
Nuntiatoria, “Quiet Conformity: The New RSHE Mandates and the State’s Imposition of Gender Ideology,” 15 Jul 2025.
Ibid., §§25–31.
Department for Education, Promoting Fundamental British Values, Statutory Guidance, 2014.
Nuntiatoria, “A Primer for Catholic Parents: The Principles of Catholic Teaching on Sex Education,” 21 Oct 2025.
Nuntiatoria, “The Hidden Digital Identifier: The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the Need for Resistance,” 3 Oct 2025.
Nuntiatoria, “Protecting Children: The NHS Sussex Controversy,” 22 Aug 2025.
Roger Watson, “When Is a Catholic School No Longer Catholic?”, 2025.