ABSTRACT
The British Government’s 1992 White Paper, ‘Choice and Diversity’ (Department for Education, 1992), provides a framework for the future of the educational system. It claims to be a radical departure from earlier arrangements in important respects, and indeed it is. Behind these proposals is a set of ideas which together could be said to constitute a coherent philosophy of education. I believe this philosophy to be mistaken. I believe, too, that it is not compatible with those understandings which are basic to a distinctive Catholic idea of the purpose and nature of schools.
