Who Do You Think You Are

I specialise in how Catholic schools write their websites.

That means I must also read how Catholic MAC websites perform. Spoiler alert, not very well.

I add in an evaluation of Catholic School Inspections reports in what one colleague described as a self-inflicted research punishment.

Many of the school website writers struggle with understanding what it means to be Catholic, or how to express it.

MAC web writers have an added problem. Many of them write as if they were still in a school. They don’t realize they are writing for a different demographic.Fortunately, on the evidence available from Catholic school websites, the schools pay little attention to their MAC writers’ efforts.

What’s Catholic?

A local professional footballer going in once a week to give football training doesn’t turn a school into a football academy.

Schools have multiple first aid kits and qualified first aiders who treat pupils who are sick, suffer cuts and bruises or faint. That doesn’t make the place a hospital.Celebrating the Eucharist once a term, with staff saying the occasional prayer and recording lists of spurious gospel values, doesn’t make the school Catholic.

I once lived on a new housing estate where there was no Catholic church. In fact, the parish was only being set up.

The parish priest lived in a council house. He celebrated Sunday Mass in a social club. That did not make the club a church.

During the week, he said Mass in an upstairs room in his council house. The ‘upstairs room’ had a symbolism of its own, but it was still in a council house.

We were happy when we built a church. It looked like a church, was used as a church. We said weekly and daily Mass, celebrated the sacraments, attended religious ceremonies and activities and it was where we met God. Everyone fully understood what the church meant as the heart of a Catholic parish. They knew we were a living part of the diocese and of the worldwide Church. People living on the estate knew what our church stood for and why we went to it.

A Catholic school should have the same public image. The building, the activities, and the main purpose of education place it in the same category as every other school.

There are other levels in the Catholic school. Its roots, its reason for existence, its deepest purpose is to be a living thread in the colourful tapestry of the wider Church.

Those extra levels need to be proclaimed making the true nature of a Catholic school as visible as our church was on the estate.

A Catholic School?

The school ensures the continuation of Catholic education for future generations.

More fundamentally, it is part of the Church’s mission to preach the gospel. It does so by providing the most superb education possible. The education activities play out in the context of a living faith community of learning.

In a Catholic school a superb education is an expertly delivered programme of learning and growth intertwined with living the gospel message. As a result, its members experience, know, understand and can respond to the gospel message of salvation that comes from believing in Jesus Christ.

The leaders create a living faith community of learning. In that context of learning and growth the leaders show the gospel message and bring people to Jesus and salvation. This is the key element that makes a Catholic school.

Say it loudly and clearly

Why don’t the writers say this? One Catholic school wrote the Nolan Principals for standards in public life governed them. Another said their mission was to “serve the Common Good”. It is bad enough to be so far off the mark without publishing their limited grasp for the entire world to read.

So, say what a local version of a living faith community of learning look like. What does it feel like? How does it affect those passing and those who have joined it? How does the school's Catholic nature colour the way teaching is done? In what ways are learning and growth delivered that shows it is Catholic?

Write about these issues on websites instead of nonsense about cooked-up values that do not relate to the gospels.

Some efforts at explanation mangle the Sermon on the Mount, or misinterpret the words of the Magnificat to support some contorted image of Catholic education that the writer gathered along their way.

Do they realise how insulting it is to claim they must rewrite the gospel values in modern terms? The gospel values and the gospel mission are as current today as they were when Jesus preached.

Why not start with a focus on a genuine gospel instruction - love one another as I have loved you?

Use a simple checklist for writing a Catholic website

1      Say what you believe in and show that those beliefs are rooted in the gospel message of salvation.

2      Explain how you work those beliefs into your everyday fabric, thinking, behaviours and, above all, into the actual act of teaching and learning

3      Tell the truth. Don’t exaggerate. Fact checking some claims makes the reader wonder what data the writer was using.

4      Be realistic in describing the range of pupils you work with. Some school websites project an image of a school packed with self-motivating, high-performing, fully-parent-supported, healthy pupils who sleep in a bed each night and are properly nourished with a balanced range of dietician programmed meals. Where did they find a school-full of such students?

5      If you are not serving the needy and neglected pupils, who are you serving other than yourself? How do you serve those with learning difficulties? Can you justify a selection format for sixth form entry based on high-achieving A-level outcomes only in a bid to sustain your self-proclaimed superiority at that exam level? Do you give any attention to PNEW students – Pupils Nobody Else Wants? Jesus had little time for the preening perfect and the self-promoting who inhabited the Temple.

6      Don’t lord it over other schools. What is special about being the better than others when all that counts is being the best for the students you serve? Who cares if you are the top school in the county or are streets ahead of other schools in the area? What happened to “the first among you be the least”?

7      Recognise the role of parents as the Church insists you should.

8      Say what it is that makes you Catholic before you say what you do and certainly before you list your so-called gospel values.

9      Get over using behaviours to describe and explain your Catholic school. Your focus on behavior makes you look like a dictatorial regime.

10   Gospel values do not need titivating in modern terms. They are already relevant and modern.

11   Show how you modify and model behaviour to reflect the gospel message by showing love, forgiveness, leading the way to salvation and building communities of love and prayer through superb teaching and learning.

12   Jesus taught from boats, hillsides, inside houses, synagogues and on the move. He drew from what was around and what the needy already knew, but dived inside them, which is where life, love, and salvation is to be found. How do you do that in your school?

A word to MAC website writers.

You are not leading a school.

Stop writing like you were still a headteacher, or a school bursar, or social worker team leader or whatever background you came from.

Understand your role in leading groups of Catholic schools. Exact accounting, massive purchasing power, and being a slick pipeline for diocesan communications go nowhere near your primary role.

What you do and how you write about your part in Catholic education is different to the way your schools do it.

Learn how to write about how you create, sustain and enrich the Catholic schools you lead.

If you don’t know, ask for help.

A word to the diocesan authorities.

Clearly, you do not read the websites of your schools and MACs. You would not tolerate the sorry state of many of them if you actually read them.

Where is your published guidance on writing about Catholic education on websites?

Where is your modelled version of skilled writing that opens the richness of Catholic education without descending into slogans, shibboleths, jargon, and inane lists of so-called values?

Please point us to it.

Go wide – world wide

Schools rinse their footballing visitor through rigorous safeguarding procedures before allowing them among their students.

Their first aiders are trained and checked. 

Stop unskilled writers with little understanding of these matters exposing the Church to ridicule when they publish their work to a world-wide audience?

It is not called the world wide web for nothing.

© 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 here 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 three 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 listen before I talk. 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