Ben Horan, the headmaster of Prior Park College, which was founded by Bishop Baines in 1830 as a Catholic seminary and school for boys, and has been described as one of the most beautiful schools in England, has also noted how the imposition of VAT on fees has heightened the pressure for the school to remain competitive, reports the Daily Telegraph.
By changing its faith designation from Catholic to Christian, Prior Park College has ended an almost 200-year relationship with the Catholic Church. The school said the move followed a “lengthy re-evaluation” about “how well our college reflects the students we have today”.
On the school’s website it now describes itself as a “co-educational Christian school in the Catholic tradition”.
Mr Horan has claimed that many parents have expressed frustrations over the “restrictive nature of being a Catholic school and the limited educational choices and outcomes that come with that”.
The school also claims it has previously been told it should “censor student-led publications if they expressed a view contrary to Catholic teaching”, and that the school’s support for Pride celebrations “have been criticised by some for being contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church”.
Announcing the break with the Catholic Church, Mr Horan said Prior Park had become “increasingly diverse in recent years, with people from different backgrounds and sexual orientation now represented across both the student and teaching body”.
The school’s website notes that gay former pupils had voiced concerns over “how difficult they found their education at the college – both historically and relatively recently”.
In March 2024, Mr Horan sent a letter to parents warning them that a new inspection framework for Catholic schools was “attempting to exercise a far greater degree of control” over the school’s teaching, reports the Telegraph.
Established in 2022, the Catholic Schools Inspectorate (CSI), which aims to combine the diocesan school inspectors of England and Wales into one body, launched a “rigorous” new inspection framework that year to scrutinise Catholic schools’ teaching.
On its website the CSI declares: “Inspection is one of the ways the bishop acts as a ‘good shepherd’ to his schools.”
An inspection report following the CSI’s visit to Prior Park earlier in 2024 stated that the school must “strengthen the centrality of Christ in the daily experience of students and staff”, adding that this would help pupils “better understand the Catholic life and mission of the college”.
Mr Horan criticised the report’s findings, telling parents in March that his teachers “pride ourselves on not proselytising to our young people, but instead in encouraging them to engage with faith and spirituality on their own terms”.
The school accepts pupils from all faith backgrounds, and fewer than one in five currently enrolled students describe themselves as Catholic, the Telegraph reports.
Mr Horan has also said that a switch to a broader Christian underpinning would also help the school remain attractive in an educational sector that was “crying out for help” amid increased financial pressures, including the Government’s imposition of VAT that will come into force at the start of January in 2025.
The school said that while the decision to ditch its Catholic roots “has been under consideration for many years…the pressure that a tax on education brings to schools like Prior Park has undoubtedly sharpened the college’s focus to complete the process”.
The co-educational boarding school, which is listed by the Oxford Royale Academy as one of the most beautiful boarding schools in the UK and charges more than £40,000 annually for full boarders, will raise fees by an initial 10 per cent from the start of 2025.
Mr Horan said he had already been in contact with “several other Catholic schools” that were asking for advice on how they might follow Prior Park’s lead.
The decision to axe ties with the Catholic Church means that Prior Park will no longer face mandatory inspections by the CSI, nor will students be required to study theology at GCSE.
The school said it would continue to offer Sunday Mass in its Grade I-listed chapel during term time, as well as to “pray together as a school” and employ a lay chaplain.
“The relationship with the Catholic Diocese remains important to us, but as society has changed, so have the pressures put upon schools to better reflect the needs and ambitions of those they serve,” Mr Horan said during the announcement.
A statement on the school’s website denied that the decision was directly linked to the CSI inspection, but added: “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’.”
Historic private schools in the UK, especially Catholic ones, are having to scramble to remain competitive amid increasing pressures coming from both the government and a changing and more secular society.
While a number of private Catholic schools have recently had to close in the face of such pressures, Downside School is leading the charge against Sir Keir Starmer’s plan to impose VAT on private school fees.
In a recent letter to parents and members of the Downside community, John Ludlow, the school’s Chair of Governors, outlined the school’s position and its efforts to engage with the government regarding the new VAT policy.
Downside has made several key recommendations to the Treasury that it claims would mitigate the potential negative impacts of the new policy on schools, students and the surrounding local communities.