The following are tried and tested methods discussed at a recent training session arranged by the Diocese of Westminster Education Service.

Warning signs could be falling rolls every year, and not being the first choice for increasing numbers of pupils.  

Potential solutions:

• make contact with local pre-schools and nurseries, ensure school’s marketing materials displayed and available 

• invite pre-schools and nurseries to use school’s resources and attend taster days

• arrange reading sessions for pre-school and nursery children with school’s Year 6 pupils

• Record in database contact details not just of every prospective parent emailing the school to enquire about places, but also those phoning up or visiting reception

• use database to invite prospective parents to open days, at which school choir sing

• write to thank prospective parents for attending open day, invite them to ask questions

• email Christmas messages to prospective parents – ie ensure regular contact

• plan a school tour route for prospective parents, choose and carefully train pupils in how to be guides

• without clear instructions pupils may spend the tour focusing on their favourite or least favourite parts of the school, which may not align with what a prospective parent needs to see 

• headteachers could attend Mass in nearby churches and introduce the school, and be available to talk to prospective parents at the end

• spread these responsibilities across several staff members, make sure everyone aware of efforts to reverse falling school rolls

• don’t leave it all up to one already very busy staff member

The training was delivered by education marketing consultancy Grebot Donnelly Associates - for a free one-to-one meeting contact Aimee Monteith at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For further advice on increasing pupil numbers for schools, contact your diocesan education service or schools commission  

Sacred Heart Catholic School is an oversubscribed mixed secondary in Camberwell, Southwark Archdiocese, of more than 850 pupils. For the last 20 years, it has been the, or one of the, top performing secondary schools in the borough of Southwark.

A third of pupils are eligible for Free School Meals and just under 50% receive the Pupil Premium. In the last academic year Sacred Heart Catholic School’s Progress 8 score put it in 11th place in the country. 

Pupil Premium funding is focused partly on improving pupil-teacher ratio – a vital tool for ensuring individual pupils’ success. Pupil-teacher ratios range from 1:30 for more academic children to 1:15 for those pupils needing extra help and support. 

The school’s sixth form is equally successful, sending pupils to Oxford, Cambridge, and Russell Group universities and to Ivy League universities in the USA. The school fundamentally believes that creating trust within the community and, in particular, with parents is vital to the overall success of the school.

Supporting the marginalised 

Supporting charities and the marginalised, defenceless and poor in the community is part of the school’s Catholic ethos. The school emphasises how it is possible for all to improve the lives of those less fortunate and therefore encourages the pupils to appreciate more of what they have.  

Pupils and staff engage in fundraising includes activities such as car washing, raffles, carol singing, penalty scoring, bake sales, and form group stalls during Charity Week. This culminates in the annual school Bridge Walk that includes up to 700 pupils and staff participating in a sponsored walk along the Thames and over London’s bridges. These activities generally raise more than £10,000 in the course of a year for the local community. 

In addition, every form group produces Christmas hampers for isolated, elderly and housebound residents in the local area, with 150 hampers hand-delivered by pupils in the run-up to Christmas last year. They also fundraise to buy Christmas gifts for more than 100 children elsewhere in the parish who would not otherwise receive any due to the increasing cost of living in inner London. Form groups donate gloves, jumpers, socks and other essential winter items to a nearby charity for military veterans. The idea of charity as the main vehicle for children to live their faith is important to the fundamental values that the school holds.  

“Through living our faith we help pupils understand that there’s always someone worse off than ourselves. Money’s always tight, but we’re a tight community as well.”

Serge Cefai, Headteacher 2005–2023

Breakfast club, homework space

Other strategies are put in place to ensure that, whenever possible, compensatory factors account for individual pupils’ circumstances. Examples are provision of a warm space from 7.30am when the school opens, with breakfast provided for pupils assessed as in need. Sacred Heart acts as a back-up facility for out of hours study when this is not possible at home due to circumstances. This includes extended opening times in the school library from 7.30am-5.30pm daily, as well as a supervised homework room.

The school prioritises building up trust through a strong emphasis on pastoral care. Pastoral teams meet very regularly and huge efforts are made to ensure that individual pupils’ circumstances are assessed.  This enables intervention strategies to be implemented, for example for pupils without any basic stationery at home, wifi, or laptops, while sharing rooms with multiple siblings. The school supplies these items along with its supervised out of hours homework space on site.        

Crisis support 

In addition, families experiencing severe difficulties are supported. This might include issues such as housing, immigration, and carer responsibilities that the cost of living crisis has worsened, and which can negatively affect pupils’ wellbeing at home. The school employs an Attendance and Support Officer who supports the work of the school in addressing issues of school attendance and welfare and, when necessary, visits families in their homes. The officer identifies issues early and facilitates family meetings with agencies, sometimes advocating on their behalf, to prevent or minimise disruption to children’s education.     

For households in crisis, several procedures are put in place including a dedicated staff member who among other things provides a school uniform mending service, along with second-hand uniforms and a stock of shoes. The pastoral team identifies when a child is in need of Free School Meals and encourages parents to apply. The school intervenes to provide meals in advance of local authority funding, in some extreme cases conducting a weekly shop at local supermarkets, replacing fire-damaged beds, and any other desperately needed items for families assessed as in extreme difficulty due to the economic climate. 

Moral education

At Key Stage 3, bespoke life skills lessons are taught that cover and exceed the national curriculum, emphasizing the importance of budgeting, savings and basic economics.

Parental engagement is again a fundamental tool for overall success. Pupils’ performance at school is ranked in order of academic achievement and behavioural criteria, so parents can see at a glance how their child is doing. Inspired by football league tables, and published on noticeboards outside classrooms, this approach has motivated pupils both to national educational success and to embody the school’s Catholic ethos. Truth and transparency leading to trust is, again, fundamental to the successful running of this high achieving school.

“As well as outstanding academic outcomes, Sacred Heart prides itself on educating the whole child.  Academic results will only go so far, and we insist on a comprehensive programme of moral education, teaching good manners and respect. We are determined to show our pupils that Gospel values are to be lived by, especially when it comes to looking after and caring for those less fortunate.”

Richard Lansiquot, Headteacher, 2023-present

Find out more about the ethos of Sacred Heart Catholic School

Professor Jackie Dunne (pictured) is Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham Newman University, one of four Catholic universities in England. 

She started her academic career lecturing in Spanish at Coventry University, and her next move was to the University of Leicester where she later became Director of Lifelong Learning. At the University of Wolverhampton she was appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor, before taking over as Vice-Chancellor at what was then Newman University, in 2020. Jackie is a Professor in Lifelong Learning and Skills.

“The thread that's run through my career in all of the roles I've had has been around widening participation and lifelong learning,” Professor Dunne said. “I've always been working to try and open up universities to non-traditional students in one way or another.”

Birmingham Newman is ranked first in England for social inclusion by the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024, has climbed the highest number of places of any institution in both the Times Good University Guide 2025 and the Guardian University Guide 2025, and has topped recent National Student Satisfaction surveys.  

Proud of the diversity of its student body, the University has a very high proportion of students with a disability, mature students, carers, those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and students who are the first in their family to go university. Nearly half of the students are from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background.

Heritage of service

What is now Birmingham Newman was established in 1968 by the CES and the Archdiocese of Birmingham as a teacher training college, to provide teachers for Catholic schools in the West Midlands. It was named after Saint John Henry Newman, who had founded the Birmingham Oratory. Since then the curriculum has significantly grown and in 2013 the college was granted university status. 

Further expansion a decade later saw the opening of a School of Nursing and Allied Health, offering nursing, physiotherapy, paramedic science and a range of other healthcare courses.

Professor Dunne said: “If you take our teacher education as the starting point, and the Catholic values that we are founded on it's not surprising when that leads to a focus and commitment on public service, the public sector, and the professions, and we've seen that focus on teaching expand out into health, policing and other curriculum areas.”

Sense of place

Nine in ten students at Birmingham Newman do not live on campus, commuting in from the city and beyond, very often living and working in the region. The Faculty of Education works with the Archdiocese of Birmingham Education Service, placing trainee teachers in local schools both Catholic and secular, with many staying on after being offered jobs.

Professor Dunne said: “Our recent name change from Newman University to Birmingham Newman University was very much about recognising the importance of the institution in this place. And place is really important for us — it's that civic role and that notion of the university as a force for good and public benefit.”

Being the smallest of five universities within Britain’s second biggest city comes with challenges in a competitive field, however, particularly during national upheaval such as the pandemic and fast-rising inflation, but Birmingham Newman is currently growing student numbers and raising its profile in the region and beyond.

The cost of living crisis has affected not only students but also staff, and Covid-era initiatives like a community pantry, subsidised meals and other support measures continue to be well used by employees and the student population.   

Going global 

Being part of a wider family is also an important aspect for Catholic education. Birmingham Newman supports the English and Welsh Catholic sector including as a higher education provider through the Formatio partnership of dioceses, Catholic multi-academy trusts and schools. In addition, Professor Dunne is Chair of the Cathedrals Group of 14 Church-founded universities. 

The University has partnerships worldwide, for instance in Wichita, Kansas, in the United States there is also a Newman University, with which Birmingham’s namesake has had a long-standing relationship for international exchanges. Similarly, the University participates in the government’s Turing Scheme for enabling study abroad.  

This academic year the University will begin to recruit undergraduate and postgraduate candidates from overseas, and offer its highly regarded student experience to a wider audience.

Professor Dunne said: “It's quite an exciting time for the University, and that is about growing our reach and providing a university opportunity for more people. We're fortunate here in that we're in a growth trajectory, we're managing to buck some trends and are in a good position.”

Growth and development 

Birmingham Newman is embarking on an estates redevelopment programme to modernise parts of the campus. This involves the demolition of Edgbaston Halls, which was one of the original 1960s accommodation blocks, landscaping works for a new outdoor area, and a pedestrianised boulevard at the front to replace an existing car park. 

Amid the success story of Birmingham Newman, and its continued growth and investment, what remains at the core of the university is its founding nature as a Catholic institution, with the Archbishop of Birmingham as a member of its governing council, carrying Catholic higher education into the future.  

Professor Dunne said: “Our foundations have influenced our values. Nowadays they articulate themselves firstly through opportunity. We see our mission very much about providing a higher education opportunity to all those who can benefit and have the talent to benefit; it's not about what they did before or didn't have the opportunity to do.

“The second part is inclusivity, that's at the centre of what we do, the whole notion of social justice, the dignity of every individual, and we continually strive to create an environment that's welcoming and inclusive, where there's a place for everyone.

“Ultimately, we are ambitious for our students and want to make sure they are supported to reach their maximum potential, that they can achieve what they set out to — or what they thought they might not be able to do.”

Find out more about Birmingham Newman University

The role of Catholic multi-academy trusts (CMATs) within the Church’s mission is currently the subject of a university research project.

St Mary’s, in Twickenham (pictured), is one of four Catholic universities in England and will look into the effectiveness and distinctiveness of CMATs, their leadership formation, and how CMATs fit in with the Church’s structures.  

The aim is to help inform the Church as it accompanies Catholic educational leaders in their vocational and spiritual formation. It promises to assist in the development of CMATs, and the structures for their support, to positively impact staff and students. 

Funded in its first phase by the Sisters of the Holy Cross Charitable Incorporated Organisation, the research will be carried out with the support of the CES; Formatio partnership of dioceses, CMATs and universities; and the Catholic Academy Trust Training Collaborative (CATtColl).

Direct oversight of the research will be undertaken by Professor Stephen Parker, Director of the university’s Centre for Catholic Education, Research and Religious Literacy (CERRL), with the support of Dr Mary Mihovilović, and CMAT Research Fellow, Dr Jakub Kowalewski. 

Professor Parker said: “St Mary's is responding to the call of CEOs themselves for knowledge which assists them in fulfilling their vocational roles in providing Catholic education which makes a difference to young lives in line with the Church's mission, at a point of significant change in Catholic education in England.”

Broadly, the research will investigate:

• the effectiveness and distinctiveness of CMATs

• the current experiences of CMAT leaders, their professional and spiritual formation and likely future need in a period of great organisational and educational change 

• the current and future positioning of CMATs within the wider mission of the Church and its existing educational and ecclesial structures of support and governance

Find out more about St Mary’s University