Oh, brilliant – another encroachment by the Catholic church on a secular bit of society.

High-performing Catholic schools are to be given considerable influence over the running and performance of struggling secular schools under plans being drawn up by the Church and government.

Catholic schools are currently bound by strict rules that mean they cannot form federations with their non-faith counterparts. But with the growth of the academies programme and the diminishing influence of local authorities, the Church wants to make a “greater contribution” to the running of different types of schools.

Well of course it does. That way it gets to impose its horrible reactionary anti-woman anti-human dogma on people who are formally outside its “magisterium.” It gets more power and control and influence. Of course the church wants to make a “greater contribution”!

Paul Barber, the new director of the Catholic Education Service, said that Church schools had an important contribution to make. “The point is that Catholic schools are part of a partnership with the state. They feel strongly that they are part of the wider family along with other schools; they share that collective responsibility.

“Many of our schools feel very strongly that they want to make a contribution to that wider scene.”

Yes of course they do. They’re imperialist. They want to spread and take over and dominate. They’re having huge success in taking over all medical care in the US, and they will no doubt have huge success in taking over all primary and secondary schooling in the UK.

“We are trying to explore the various ways in which Catholic schools can, if they wish to, assist other schools, including those which aren’t Catholic. We are looking at other mechanisms, other forms of trust arrangements,” he said.

The plan follows a similar ambition outlined more than a year ago by the Church of England, which also wanted to offer partnerships and advice to non-Church schools.

Of course it did, for the same reasons. Der. They don’t want to fade away, they want more power, more influence, more money, more jobs for the boys.

Mr Barber added that Catholic schools had “general principles about ethos and values” that could be brought to a wider community.

Pre-cisely.

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said that faith schools should not have a say in how secular schools were run. “Whenever you have a merger or amalgamation of a faith and non-faith school, everything always leans towards faith,” he said. “What if Catholic schools start to insist on a Catholic head or they want to sack people who don’t want to teach RE?”

A report by the British Humanist Association last year highlighted that, in the past five years, a number of schools had been redesignated as faith schools, but that no schools had lost their religious character.

Another front opens.