City school plans out of joint

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they must be planned on a wider, regional basis.
Financially, this fa c t received recognition in 1952 when a contribution was imposed on all parishes for an archdiocesan building fund. This was necessary if only to bring home to Catholics that Catholic education is a responsibility not of the individual parish hut of the Church as a whole.
The first new Catholic school in the city opened since the war came before this arrangement and involved the parish (Northfield) in the impossible burden of over £40,000 for a primary school of quite minimum size. a burden courageously and unhesitatingly undertaken by the parish priest.
Since then each year has seen the starting of at least one other major project primary schools at Great Barr and Sheldon and a secondary school at King's Heath being already C ompleted or approaching completion.
Plans to 1957
Plans for the years to 1957 include secondary schools at Acock's Green. Old Oscott, Tile Cross, Northfield, Handsworth and Edgbaston, and primary schools at King's Heath, Perry Common and Shard End.
Parishes still without primary schools may still have to wait while new secondary schools are built to take children from the already overcrowded primary schools.
A five year programme offers prospect of no fewer than 3,160 new places for Catholic children, not quite 12 per cent. of the new places for children in other schools in the same period.
Pending the building of new schools, children from new housing estates in east Birmingham are being transported to schools in the central area.
The building of Catholic schools is being urged on by the education committee to the utmost extent that permits can be secured.
"Financially we could hardly undertake more building than we are doing" is the comment of one prominent priest in the city.
No grammar schools Grammar school provision is excluded at the moment from the general financial arrangements. For extensions at St. Philip's Cirammar School the responsibility will be undertaken mainly by the old boys of the school led by the headmaster and helped by the Oratorians. Proposed extensions at St. Paul's will be a gift to the Catholics of Birmingham from the Sisters of Charity of St. Paul.
These extensions will make possible an admission of 105 boys and 105 girls each year. Before 1951 this would have been sufficient for 15 per cent. of Birmingham's Catholic children to enter a grammar school. It is unlikely that it will be sufficient in the next few years or ever in 'the future unless the number of children falls to the prc-1951 level, and this, in view of post-war baptism figures, is not to be expected.
The needs of Birmingham Catholics would surely be met by two more grammar schools each admitting 60 to 70 pupils a year. Such new schools would also be sufficient for the Catholic children in neighbouring
areas.
When the development plan for the area was first drawn up in 1945 and following years, this requirement was not even envisaged.
At a disadvantage
In view of the higher cost of
grammar school places, the decision to concentrate on secondary educa tion of some sort for all Catholic children could hardly be questioned. The development of grammar school teaching can follow later.
All the same, Birmingham's education committee is substantially extending county grammar school provision in the next few years. Catholics will not only be at a disadvantage in respect of grammar schools. There is no Catholic counterpart to the various technical schools already in existence and to which the education committee is proposing early additions.
At the other end of the scale comes the backward child. A Catholic population of 120,000 certainly includes enough educationally subnormal children to fill a fair-sized special school. but no Catholic school of this nature has even been proposed. All such children will find their way to non-Catholic special schools.
It is not many years since nonCatholic childien were frequently
found in Birmingham's Catholic schools. The rise in the Catholic population to over 10 per cent. of the city's population is recent; its effect on the schools is not even yet felt.
All Catholic schools tin spite of additional classrooms) are full, and their numbers will not be reduced. In fact. the pressure upon them has not reached its height.
The general impression of the situation is that financial stringency has caused planning to be conservative rather than adventurous; building delays and restrictions have caused the programme to be realised slower than the increasing numbers demanded.
Larger bill
In any case, the bill to the Catholics--estimated some years ago as L693.000-is likely to come to substantially more if. as seems probable. a still increasing Catholic child population must be catered for and if grammar school costs are added.
From 1939 to 1953 the children in Catholic schools went up from 9,500 to 15.000, from 6,6 per cent. of the total school children in 1939 to 8.5 percent. in 1953.
More than 2,500 additional Catholic school places have been provided since the war.
Professions at Nazareth House
On the Feast of the Assumption (Saturday), Fr. Dcclan Fallon, C.P., presided at a ceremony of clothing and profession at Nazareth House, Hammersmith, London. Four postulants received the white veil, two sisters were admitted to their first profession, and four took their final vows. On the same day final vows were taken by sisters in Melbourne, Australia. Los Angeles, and Christchurch, New Zealand.