IT ALL started when I was involved in an online discussion with fellow contributors to The Prompt on the issues facing Catholic schools today. Somebody suggested: Why not interview Bro. Paul Rogers FSC, Principal of Catholic Junior College, who seems to be turning things round? To our delight, he kindly agreed to be interviewed. We are privileged and grateful to share with you his views on the challenges facing Catholic Schools today.

Bro. Paul has over thirty years of experience in education both in Australian and Singapore schools. From 1992-1997, he was the principal of St. Joseph’s Institution and after completing his Masters in Educational Leadership from the Australian Catholic University, he returned to Singapore to take up his present position at the end of 2001. The interview was conducted through a face-to-face meeting and over e-mail.

What do you think are the main challenges facing Mission Schools in Singapore today?

I think the whole concept of Mission Schools has changed considerably. For the first 130 years it was the mission largely of catechising, some evangelising but not a great deal. For the most part, the Catholic population attended Catholic Schools. That changed significantly from about 1975. The education system was reconfigured. To accommodate growing numbers of Catholic students in non-Catholic schools, the parishes developed their great catechetical apostolate. I think Mission Schools nowadays have a mission to evangelise and to catechize, but NOT to proselytise.

The ranking of schools began in 1992. It put great pressure on all schools, but on Catholic schools in particular. The best Catholic students were being sent to the better ranked secular schools in greater numbers because they were perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the best for their kids. Unfortunately this has generated a greater sense of elitism and status among schools. Now, mission schools are in a bit of a dilemma: we have to accept ranking and be faithful to our mission as an instrument of the church.

As the principal at St. Joseph’s Institution I wanted to establish a good Catholic school where any student of any religion or culture who studied there would be challenged to ponder their own faith adherence and to grow in that faith irrespective of whether they were Christian, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist or a free thinker. Freedom of religion has to be cultivated and respected and it was easy to do so in SJI. As C.C Tan, a former Josephian of the 1930’s once said: “It made me a better Buddhist.”

What are the difficulties that Mission Schools have in meeting these challenges?

We never had the same single identity that exists for example under the RI-RGS-RJC banner or with a clan network such as Hwa Chong. Our identity has always been “Catholic”, which is much broader; this includes the Church and Religious Orders, among which also there is great diversity of approaches.

We have not been able to change our modus operandi quick enough to adjust to the changing needs of our society. Schools like RI, the clan schools and even the Methodist schools could change much more easily without the impact of such diversity that identified Catholic schools. So we’ve got the Church running schools and we’ve got many different Orders running schools. There is affiliation and we are dependent on each other. But the affliation is not under one banner like the ACS group of schools. The Catholic group of schools has been a very loose confederation of schools until now.