The strike at the John Fisher School in Purley continued this week, as staff demanded the reinstatement of sacked governors and the restoration of a cancelled invitation to the author Simon James Green.
In an update to parents of pupils at the school, the National Education Union said that the dispute “is not something the school, its staff or leadership wanted to happen”, but that the cancellation of Mr Green and subsequent sackings by the Archdiocese of Southwark were “of grave concern” and undermined the school’s “harmonious and inclusive environment”.
It said that replacement governors installed by the archdiocese “have failed to uphold basic governance practices”.
A letter to parents from the archdiocese dated 6 May said that members of the governing body were attending meetings with the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service to resolve the dispute.
It said that it was working to address the union’s concerns, and repeated that the cancellation of Mr Green’s visit “was never to do with the sexual orientation of the author but simply the blasphemous and highly sexualised nature of the author’s books”.
This point was reiterated by the Archbishop of Westminster on Monday. Cardinal Vincent Nichols told a press conference that the Archbishop of Southwark, John Wilson, had briefed last week’s plenary meeting of the bishops of England and Wales on the situation.
Cardinal Nichols emphasised that it was the content of the books which was objectionable, and said that the offending passages were unsuitable for repetition.
The letter, from the archdiocese’s chief operating officer Paul McCallum, said that foundation governors were appointed “to ensure the school is run as a Catholic school in all respects”, and that following their action “in not accepting the advice of the education commissioner it was decided to replace the foundation governors”.
*The Diocese of Nottingham has welcomed the findings of the Schools Adjudicator that “there has been no unfair restriction on parental choice” by the removal of one of its primary schools in Leicester from the list of feeders for a non-Catholic secondary. “While we have found that the selection of feeder schools was not made on reasonable grounds, we have not seen any evidence that in practice this is leading to unfair disadvantage for any children,” said the adjudicator’s determination. A spokesman for the diocesan education service called this “a fair assessment of the situation”.
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