As a governor of two Catholic schools – one a primary in a deprived area of Cardiff, the other a high school serving post-industrial Barry and the leafy Vale of Glamorgan – may I take issue with Colin Hardy (Letters, 21/28 December 2013). It is not my experience that “a higher proportion of Catholic children come from two-parent backgrounds… supported by committed parents.” Maybe things are very different in County Durham.Both schools are at the top of their game academically and in Catholic ethos. At its last inspection the high school was judged good at everything, but excellent for pastoral care. Perhaps that is why it has more than three times the number of looked-after children than any other secondary school in the county. Catholic ethos is about what