Birmingham MAC Websites Rated Inadequate

How do you tell the boss of a Catholic Academy – a top boss - ‘the welcome page on your website is inaccurate, woefully weak on content, shows poor writing skills and is of little relevance to anyone other than yourself.’

I call them ‘top boss’ because in the Birmingham diocese multi-academy companies (MACs) some are called the Catholic Senior Executive Leader (CSEL), some are known as chief accountant and two MACs have no named or identifiable person in charge.

Multiply that scenario by thirteen and you see the problem the archdiocese has in monitoring the writing of the top boss in each of its MACs.

Some credit

Three of the thirteen MAC leaders understand how to say they are a group of Catholic schools.

They won’t be around for long. They are sentenced to be amalgamated.

On the other hand, the mounting weight of evidence against forcing every school into a MAC strait jacket and reducing the numbers of MACs for reasons of bureaucracy and control might be telling enough for someone to rethink the process.

Questions for the diocese

Did anyone actually read the websites before they were published? They are, after all, the public statements of a key position on your education policy. 

How were they passed as fit for publication?

Take the names

Who gets to choose the name of the saint or the Gospel passage that are twisted by the personal preferences and limited theological insights of the person who suggested them? The RE teachers in the schools in these MACs must cringe at the way the gospels are misused by their top boss.

Could I name a MAC the ‘Fishing Boat MAC’? I could describe how all we do flows from passages about boats in the gospels. Jesus escapes in a boat, he walks across the water towards one, sits in one to be out of reach of the crowd enabling him to preach, invites Peter to climb out of one and walk on the water.

I could easily list our values flowing from phrases such as ‘In the boat’, or ‘At sea’, or ‘Man overboard’.

Navigating on the water gives a sound base for the way we say your prayers, organise visits from the local priest and make sure parents are not allowed to interfere because we see them as pirates, smugglers, illegal boat people or marauding invaders.

I did consider the title ‘The Rich Young Man Who Went Away Sorrowful MAC’ but it lacks warmth and suggests failure.

A simple guide for the failed website writers in rewriting their welcome page.

1.     Draw your description of a Catholic school from the CES publications of what makes a Catholic school.

2.     Obey the basic rules of writing and in particular the requirements of the website genre.

3.     Identify who you are writing for and what you want to say.

4.     Delegate the task to someone who understands what they are writing about and is able to write effectively.

Add in

1)    Don’t say everything on this one welcome page. Plan a strategy to roll out your statement of who you are and what you do. Work to a time frame that recognises times of the year, festivals, transition points and key moments in the life of your schools. Adapt your language to match the government's published data on the educational levels of parents and other readers in your MAC catchment. That data tells you if they can read what you write.

2)    Figure out if you are primarily a school, or a faith community, or an intertwining of both. In the last option, the quality of teaching and learning and the level of achievement of pupils and students is enhanced and inspired by your understanding of what it is to be part of the archdiocesan mission of preaching the gospel. Tell us what that looks like when you do it.

3)    Incidentally, you should state you are part of the Birmingham archdiocese. The reason you exist is not expressed in some paltry motto you thought up while stuck in a motorway traffic jam. Your statement should reflect what the archbishop wants you to do with a group of his schools. These places figure high on his list of core responsibilities.

4)    Having the best exam scores in the county is not what the diocese set you up to do. That might be a consequence of how you interpret the gospel message by managing and leading a faith community that provides the best learning and personal, faith and academic growth to a high level of achievement. Tell us how you do that.

5)    There was a time when if you asked a pupil or student in Coventry Catholic schools where they were from, they told you the name of their parish rather than the district or street where they lived. Do you foster that perception and experience? Or are parishes superfluous to your requirements of being the best exam factory in the county or indeed the best on the Catholic MAC landscape? Read Luke 22 v.24-27 if you want to be the best in anything.

6)    Read the gospel – at least a chapter each day and let it talk to you rather than you interrogating the text for a phrase to lead off your assembly or to find a spurious link with some new value you have found that would look impressive on your growing list of values you stand for.

7)    Ask your heads of RE to help you articulate the theology base. They are qualified and trained. They know more about theology and scripture than you.

8)    Do not ignore the Church’s stated position that parents are the primary educators of their children. Take us through how you demonstrate that belief.

9)    How will you square Pope Francis’ call for a synodal Church with your diminution of individual school leadership, limited information sharing, curtailed decision making and weakened responsibility for the headteachers and governors of your member schools that many complain about? Or is it best not to mention that massive change?

Using research and expertise?

The principles of Cognitive Linguistics and in particular the findings of Text World Theory allow a reader to identify what is in the mind of the writer of any piece of prose that attempts to set the record straight, to describe a situation, or to justify a stance.

Criminal and civil trial transcripts show ample use of this procedure.

A disconcerting picture is painted when these principles are applied to the websites of ten of the Catholic MACs in Birmingham.

You might claim that some of the faults and glaring weaknesses are technical, but how to react when the top boss fails to understand and express clearly what makes a Catholic MAC unique?

Read these ten websites and you will end up muttering, who wrote this, what were they thinking, was any guidance offered, did anyone check, edit, proof read and decide it was so bad as to bin it and start again?

How do you tell a top boss that conclusion?

It costs around 6.5% of each top-sliced school budget to be led by these top bosses. The least we should expect is that they know what they are dealing with.

Instead, there is hardly a mention of the archbishop’s vision for education, only rare references to the diocesan gospel mission, confusion between school mottos and school education mission, and little grasp of how the school’s education is mingled with and fosters the work of the Church. Several websites give a perception of school and Catholic as two units coexisting alongside each other. The picture comes to mind of two rail tracks running in tandem but never actually meeting, one being a school, the other a place where lots of prayers are said, without a clear expression of what makes the school unique and successful because it is a Catholic institution.

Not such great value at 6.5% sliced from a limited budget.

The inspection of Methodist schools has a telling activity.

“SIAMS inspectors will explore with school and trust leaders how they understand the specific context of the school, and whether they know how to respond to it theologically. Local, diocesan, and national expertise will help school and trust leaders to explore this, so that they can be confident in answering three key questions:

-               Who are we as a school?

-               What are we doing here?

-               How, then, shall we live and learn together?”

(The Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist School - SIAMS Framework. September 2023)

Don’t you just love that “… respond to it theologically”?

Not a bad set of questions to require each top boss of a Catholic MAC to answer on their website welcome page.

The answer to those questions will separate the real top bosses from those who only plug a gap.

© Ted Dunphy

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Disclaimer

I am not connected in any way with the Birmingham Diocesan Education Service or the Catholic Education Service. The views expressed are my own and are based on experience, research and evidence. 

The experience comes from teaching in and working with Catholic schools around England over many years.

The research is based on the past two years investigating Catholic school websites in countries around the world, but especially in England.

An evidence-based approach challenges and refines the learning from the experience and the research.

I strongly support Pope Francis’ concept of synodality as a way of finding truth. I welcome you to have your say.

Ted Dunphy

edwarddunphy1@mac.com

Tel: 44 (0) 1527 894659

Mobile: 44 (0) 7891 179180

www.schoolwebsitewriting.com