Schools & Academies

The Diocese of Shrewsbury seeks to provide the means for Christians to be formed – educated – in the faith. The task of education lies primarily with parents but then come the parishes, schools and colleges of the diocese.

This section of the website is about those areas of diocesan life with a responsibility for the education and formation of children and students in the faith.

Our educational mission entails the ongoing development of the entire potential of every person. It seeks to promote the well-being and freedom of every person made in the image and likeness of God and finding fulfilment in God alone.

The Church has always promoted education. God made the world, and everything and everybody in it; and the more we understand the world, its history, and our place in it as human beings, the better equipped we are to increase our faith and hope in God, our love for God and our neighbour, and our love for the Church on earth, in and through which God invites us all to come to know, love and serve him.

As the Catechism says, “Parents are the principal and first educators of their children”. So all schools exist to help parents to fulfil this duty and privilege of providing education. A short answer to the question “Why have Catholic schools and colleges?” is, “So that Catholic parents can have the best opportunities for enabling their children to grow to responsible adulthood in the knowledge and love of God and neighbour”, or putting it another way, “the best opportunities for helping their children to develop a deeply-rooted and fully mature Catholic faith and life”.

This means that the schools and colleges must be good schools and colleges – they must do their best to provide competent or even excellent teaching through a full and well-balanced curriculum, in a good atmosphere which encourages achievement. And they must be Catholic schools and colleges: not in theory or in name only, but by way of a readiness to promote understanding of and commitment to the fullness of Catholic truth and sacramental life, even in the face of the increasing rejection of Catholic values (which are truly human values, to be embraced by everybody, not only Catholics) by people with power and influence in today’s world.

The Diocese of Shrewsbury is determined that all the Catholic maintained schools for which it is responsible as Trustee will be and will remain truly worthy of the description “Catholic”.