You report that, compared to other schools, Catholic schools in England have a higher proportion of pupils who live in the most deprived areas, but a lower proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals (News from Britain and Ireland, 7 December). This apparent contradiction merits further study. As head teacher of a Catholic school serving a deprived community, I have long believed that to use eligibility for free school meals as the only yardstick for assessing poverty in children is inadequate and unhelpful and that therefore debate based on these statistics is likely to be sterile.What is certain is that those opposed to denominational schools will always insist that the relative success of Catholic schools in particular is due more to inequalities of intake than to any superiori