Why are Catholic schools doing better than Protestant ones?
Opinion: Poverty and community key issues in educational performance
‘It is this combination of economic advantage and community background that offers the most obvious explanation of the sharply different educational outcomes.’
On my first day at St Columb’s in Derry many years ago, the president, Fr Anthony McFeely, later bishop of Raphoe, gathered the first years together in the senior study and delivered an inaugural address. He began by explaining that St Columb’s was seen by the church, and this was how we were to understand it, as “a junior seminary.” Its primary function was to produce priests to guarantee the future of the church.
Its secondary function to train the future leaders of the Catholic community, a middle class (although I don’t think he used the term) to speak for “ordinary” (he did use that term) Catholics in public affairs. Much was expected of us. The interests of the students, the church and the community were bound up together. All had an interest in our doing well.