With the end of school selection interviews, the bishops will have to think hard about who in future will deserve a Roman Catholic education

The new school term is just a few days away, and for thousands of parents it is a particularly tense one. This is the time of year when the most desirable primary and secondary schools in the country, those with more applications than places, decide which pupils will be fortunate, and which will be rejected.

For Catholic parents, the whole circus of selecting from a list of schools what they hope will be the best for their child, brings an additional, nerve-wracking element. At some point in the next month they must submit themselves for interview with the head, sometimes with the governors as well, to determine whether or not they and their child are sufficiently committed to the religious aims of the school to deserve a place.

Now that selection process is to come to an end; schools are picking their last ever intake by interview. From this autumn, a new code of practice resulting from the 2002 Education Act effectively bars any faith-based state school from quizzing parents in this way and comes into force for the school year starting 2005. Certainly, the idea that schools should be picking the pupils rather than the other way around makes a nonsense of ?parental choice?. The interviews staged at primary and secondary schools over the next month or so will be the last.

The problem is, however, that given their consistently good write-ups from the inspectors, comparatively good discipline and better than average examination results, denominational schools, both Catholic and Anglican, are frequently asked to take many more pupils than could possibly be squeezed in.

Some applicants are weeded out because they do not fit the most basic criteria: they are not baptised as Catholics and they live nowhere near the school. But that can still leave dozens to choose from. (Some of the country?s most troubled schools, however, are also Catholic, as recent league tables demonstrated. On average, however, denominational schools are in strong demand.)

No one knows how many denominational schools have been taking advantage of selection interviews. Catholic bishops say it is ?very much a minority?; but in certain areas, most notably London, that is a very significant minority of Catholic schools ? or even a majority. The high-profile London Oratory school has three applications for every place, and interviews as many candidates as possible.

The news that the interviews will no longer be permitted has been met with ill-concealed anger by many Catholic headteachers and governors, but they will get little support from the Church hierarchy because it is the Catholic bishops themselves who asked education ministers to make the change, along with their counterparts in the Church of England. Interviews had become a source of political embarrassment, for the churches found themselves beset by claims that the process encouraged the ?covert selection? of articulate and committed middle-class families.

John McIntosh, the head of the Oratory school, in west London, accuses the bishops and their Catholic Education Service (CES) of failing to consult schools. He says that schools will become even more dependent on priests? references when they attempt to sort out the truly committed Catholics from those who never pass through a church door ? and he says that such references are not always very accurate.

Most suspect that the Oratory and other Catholic schools in the same boat will remain successful and popular, but the abolition of interviews has opened up a debate on the question of who Catholic schools should be for.

John McIntosh is quite clear: Catholic schools are for the children of families who practise their faith, and the more committed they are, the better should be their chances of admission. ?I make no personal judgment about people who don?t practise?, he said. ?But the fact is that Catholic schools were built to provide a Catholic education for Catholic children. If there?s a shortage of places then parents who have made the sacrifices to build and maintain the schools deserve those places.?

Fr Jeff Cridland, parish priest at St Finbar in Aylesham, Kent, who has spent 25 years as a school governor of numerous primary and secondary schools in London and the South-East is also opposed to the abolition of interviews. He argues that, far from benefiting the middle classes, face-to-face interviews enable heads and governors to ensure fair play. He also points to the widespread reports of ?cheating?, where children are baptised for no purpose other than to improve their chances of admission.

?I don?t think it is viable for the Catholic Church to take on the education of half the population?, Fr Cridland says. He is refreshingly frank in suggesting that control over the intake is the only way to help to improve the fortunes of a struggling school ? a position which commands widespread sympathy. But it is precisely the idea of schools picking and choosing that has so concerned Catholic and Anglican bishops. In their 1997 document ?The Common Good? and the educational commentary that followed shortly afterwards, the Catholic bishops were clear that competition among schools for desirable pupils, aided by the publication of ?league tables?, was leaving some inner urban schools and the students they serve in a disastrous bind.

Their argument is that, as a matter of doctrine, anyone baptised a Catholic is entitled to a Catholic education. Degrees of Catholicity do not come into it. The educational commitment and social wherewithal displayed by parents most emphatically do not come into it. Sarah Billington, the Catholic Education Service legal adviser, explains: ?The fact remains that the child has been baptised and the child should not suffer for the parents? lapse. They would be doubly punished. A growing number of children do not come from a home which is strongly involved in the parish.?

For the Church of England, this aspect of community welfare is straightforward and presents no conflict. Its Board of Education has an explicit mission for all pupils in the country, including Catholics, and its inner city schools are often packed with children from south Asian and Caribbean backgrounds.

The Catholic education system, in contrast, is pulled two ways at once. With 1,800 primaries in England and Wales and nearly 400 secondaries, the Church is a major educational player, with significant responsibilities to the schools system as a whole. It consumes a considerable amount of taxpayers? money. This is even more the case now that the Church, far from being oppressed, is seen as an established, even fashionable part of British life.

It is increasingly recognised that the real problem of inequity in the system is nothing to do with faith-based education. For more than a decade, schools have been encouraged to compete against each other for parents, leaving the weak to flounder and even drown. If some schools are allowed to become middle-class ghettos, the consequences for the rest are disastrous.

What then of maintaining entirely Catholic intakes or, if you like, Catholic ghettos? Where, you might ask, does that leave the Church?s commitment to social justice? It is not as if identifying ?true? Catholics will get any easier, with or without interviews. As the bishops themselves acknowledge, many pupils in their schools play little or no active role in church or parish life as it is. And there is little evidence that an education at a Catholic school, however desirable it might be, persuades them to do so.

Nicholas Pyke will be writing a regular column on religious education.

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