Catholic schools' diversity and academic success come at a priceWIKICOMMONS: PAUL HALLIWELL

Amid the furore over grammar schools, relatively little attention has been paid to another aspect of Theresa May’s education policy – one which could have equally great ramifications for the future make-up of the British education system. That is, the government's intention to relax admissions rules for new faith schools, which explicitly aims to encourage new Catholic schools to open in England.

England has a rich tradition of faith schools and long may this continue. Whereas in many countries religious educational establishments are the preserve of the fee-paying sector because of strict insistence on state secularism, it is a mark of cultural openness that parents in England are given the choice, regardless of financial situation, to educate their children in accordance with their faith. However, the government must ensure that this sharing of faith constitutes an open and informed discourse.

It is easy to understand why Catholic schools seem attractive to the Department for Education: they are typically both high performing and ethnically diverse. The latter may strike some people as surprising, but it is no secret that England's Catholic community is thriving thanks to growing numbers of Catholic immigrants — Poles in particular. And one of the great strengths of Catholic schools is their ethos of respect and tolerance. The standard of pastoral care in the two Catholic schools I attended was absolutely exemplary: it left an important mark on my life and I know that many of my friends, both Catholic and non-Catholic, felt the same way. But this guiding ethos of respect should extend further, to respecting a young person’s right to make his or her own choices.

Because there is an uncomfortable side to Catholic education. On one hand, it is a kind of denial: an unwillingness to accept social realities. On the other, it is intransigence: an obstinacy towards alternative ways of viewing the world and of living one's life. This was most apparent when it came to the sex education I received at school, which was as comical as it was concerning. At primary school, we worked through a PSHE booklet called “God: The Great Provider”. In the first section, we learnt about how flowers reproduce; in the second, we were taught that birds mate by putting their cloaca openings together. That was the end of my primary school sex ed: presumably we were just supposed to infer the rest. Then, in secondary school, it got even more ridiculous. Sex education (in the very loose sense of the term) was taught single-handedly by my RE teacher, in a particularly memorable one-hour lesson, in which she imparted her infallible mantra “if in doubt, keep your pants on”, and then proceeded to explain that the only way to guarantee avoiding STDs is by not having sex until you're married. Case closed. I'm honestly not exaggerating: that was it for sex ed. Consent was also noticeably absent from the curriculum. I don't intend to imply that this was sinister, but it certainly was shameful.

The problem is that when Catholic education encounters something that it's uncomfortable with, its default response is to pretend it simply doesn't exist. This is, insultingly, the standard approach to homosexuality. The Church now claims to accept gay people, but only on the precondition that they consign themselves to a life of celibacy. So the only way for my gay friends at school to get sexual health advice was to have a quiet word with certain sympathetic teachers, and then pretend the conversation never happened. Our school curriculum also reflected this preference for gay people's non-existence: I remember my A-level English teacher privately explaining to me the reason why we couldn't study The Picture of Dorian Gray.

But perhaps the most saddening thing of all was when a Catholic teacher told me the story of how a 16-year-old student had confided to her that she was pregnant and was considering having an abortion, and that she had managed to persuade her to go through with the pregnancy. Now, this teacher was one of the kindest people I have ever met and I have no doubt she had the best intentions at heart – after all, according to her belief-system, abortion is a terrible crime – and for all I know the young woman in question may now be very happy with the decision she made. But that’s not the point: it’s unacceptable for people in a position of trust to be allowed to put pressure on a young person making an incredibly difficult and personal decision.

There’s nothing wrong with faith schools teaching their own values and beliefs. But schools don’t have the right to deny children the ability to make informed life choices. The government knows that faith schools promote their own social teachings, and so it absolutely must insist on sending dedicated professionals into every faith school to offer objective information about sexual health, sexuality, consent and family planning. Theresa May should use her planned expansion of the faith school system as an opportunity to deal with this problem head on and ensure that doctrinal obstinacy never gets in the way of the fundamental principle that all children have the right to be informed.

Now, if the government did insist on such intervention, I suspect that the Catholic Church would lose its appetite for opening new schools. And this would be a grave pity, because the Church should recognise that the best way to share faith is through honest and frank dialogue, not by brushing things under the carpet. Showing a teenager how to put on a condom isn’t going to make them any more or less likely to refrain from having sex before they’re married, but it will mean that Catholic schools don’t renege on their duty of care.