Alan Whelan (Letters, 24 January) may be right to oppose the creation of new academies with guaranteed Catholic places as low as 50 per cent, but I cannot agree with the reasons he gives for his opposition. Like him I spent my entire career in the Catholic sector, retiring last year after 21 years as head of a large Catholic secondary school with a majority Catholic population. Mr Whelan seems to believe in a rather crude equation whereby the greater the percentage of Catholics, the more Catholic a school will be. Fortunately, the reality is much more complex; there are many Catholic schools serving inner city areas with very small Catholic populations that are beacons of faith living out the gospel values. Sadly, there are also some 100 per cent Catholic schools, often very successful in