Catholic Schools in the Marketplace: Changing and Enduring Religious Identities

ABSTRACT

Despite controversies surrounding faith-based schooling, religious schools continue to play a prominent role in numerous education systems. Nonetheless, empirical research on nonstate religious schools operating in a market context remains limited and fragmented. On the one hand, while religious and cultural studies investigate the evolution of religious education (RE), they tend to focus on state schools while overlooking the impact of market forces. On the other hand, research on education markets often treats religious private schools as a uniform category with a fixed identity. This study aims to bridge this gap by delving into the responses of religious private schools to competitive pressures, focusing on how these schools negotiate their religious identities in a market context. With this objective, the paper presents a case study of Catholic school networks in Catalonia, Spain. We identify three different approaches to RE and religious identity developed by these school networks—confessional, culture-centric and value-centric. The triggering factors and enabling conditions behind these approaches are examined in detail. The study concludes by discussing the relevance of these findings for ongoing debates around the public funding of faith-based schools and the tensions posed by such policies in terms of social cohesion, educational pluralism, and equity.

Introduction

The role of nonstate religious schools¹ in educational systems and the state’s obligations toward them are the object of a long-established debate. While political struggles around the accommodation and subsidization of private religious schools can be traced back to the creation of mass education systems (Ansell & Lindvall, 2013), the debate around the recognition and public funding of faith-based schools exhibits an enduring quality. In Europe, as a result of contemporary social transformations, including secularization processes and growing levels of religious diversity, private faith-based schools have come under the spotlight in recent decades (Maussen & Bader, 2015). In the United States, debates around the possibility of these schools’ receiving public funding, either through voucher schemes or charter school programs (Garnett, 2017; Weinberg, 2007), have similarly been gaining political salience.

Despite their controversial character, private faith-based schools are nowadays considered an alternative to public schooling in most education systems, and a significant share of Western countries have schemes allowing nonstate² schools to receive at least some public funding, usually conditional to certain requirements (Glenn, 2018). Public subsidies for private schools are often accompanied by considerable levels of freedom of school choice and school autonomy (Zancajo et al., 2022a). Accordingly, disputes around nonstate religious schools have become intertwined with broader normative debates around school choice and education markets—often bringing to the fore the tensions posed by such policies in terms of social cohesion, citizenship, educational pluralism, and equity (D’Agostino et al., 2022; Fabretti, 2011; Wilson, 2018).

However, and for all the controversy generated by this modality of educational provision, empirical research on nonstate religious schools, and specifically on how these schools operate in market contexts, remains limited and fragmentary. While the changing role of nonstate religious schools in light of broader educational and social transformations has been addressed by different bodies of literature, it has not been systematically examined.

On the one hand, research on the impact of increasing religious diversity among students has tended to focus on secular public schools, often concentrating on the teaching of religious education (RE) (Martínez-Ariño & Teinturier, 2019). Nonstate religious schools have conversely received more-limited attention. To be sure, an emerging strand of literature is concerned with the recent establishment of minority-faith schools, focusing on countries in which non-Christian faith-based schools have been on the rise (e.g., Walford, 2008, on the UK; Merry & Driessen, 2016, on the Netherlands). However, much less is known about the role of religion in the operation of nonstate schools affiliated with the main Christian denominations. On the other hand, education-policy research has extensively examined processes of privatization and marketization of education but offers more limited insight into the specificities of faith-based schools. Despite growing recognition that faith-based schooling is highly heterogeneous, empirical evidence engaging with the internal diversity of the sector remains limited. While an emerging strand of literature focuses on the intersection between school choice and religion, it has tended to concentrate on the demand side (Green, 2018). Our study combines elements of these two research strands to analyze the varying responses of religious schools in competitive contexts, considering the specificities of faith-based schools as educational providers and the market as a distributor of educational goods.

Based on these considerations, this paper aims to understand how, in light of secularization trends and growing religious pluralism, faith-based schools operating in a market context negotiate their religious identity and approach to religious expression in education. To this end, we rely on a case study conducted in Catalonia (Spain) and focus on the responses of a sample of Catholic school networks. An examination of the Spanish education system is particularly appropriate for gaining insight into such questions, given that Spain features an important share of private subsidized religious schools that has remained relatively stable over time. In addition, the current process of demographic decline resulting from a dropping birthrate is leading to a reduction of the school-age population and, therefore, to the intensification of school competition. These trends operate to magnify, and offer a lens for understanding, the impact of competitive pressures experienced by faith-based schools.

The paper is structured as follows. In the first section, we present an overview of two distinct strands of literature that allow us to theoretically articulate our research object. Secondly, we offer an overview of the context of the study, focusing on the role of Catholic educational providers in Spain and the process of demographic and religious change recently experienced in the country. The third section describes the empirical strategy informing the study. Next, we present the main findings of our research, which correspond to a typology of approaches to religious identity and expression developed by the examined Catholic education providers. Finally, we conclude by discussing the relevance of the study for ongoing debates.

Unpacking the religious orientation of faith-based schools: Analytical considerations

Existing literature has not theorized in-depth the factors that shape the religious identity of faith-based providers in the context of educational markets. To analytically articulate the impact of competitive pressures on nonstate schools’ religious identity, we turn to two separate but complementary strands of literature. Firstly, we consider an established corpus of scholarship concerned with the religious identity of faith-based organizations (FBOs), which allows us to understand better the different forms in which the religiosity of faith-based schools can manifest. Secondly, we review existing scholarship on schools’ responses to market competition, which allows us to identify the contextual and organizational factors shaping faith-based schools’ efforts at articulating their religious identities in competitive environments.

Locating religion within FBOs

Since the late 1990s, the religious nature of FBOs engaged in the delivery of welfare and social services has been the object of extensive analysis. One recurrent idea advanced by this literature is that FBOs differ greatly in the degree to and the form in which religion is incorporated into their mission, service delivery, and identity. Several authors have problematized the homogeneous nature often associated with the FBO category, bringing to the fore the diversity it encompasses (see Maes et al., 2023); accordingly, a wide array of typologies and indicators of religiosity have been proposed (Ebaugh et al., 2003; Jeavons, 1997; Sider & Unruh, 2004; Smith & Sosin, 2001). Roughly, the markers of religiosity identified by these works can be grouped into two general dimensions—namely, identity and purpose, which capture how religious considerations shape the goals of organizations; and organizational attributes, capturing the relative autonomy of FBOs vis-à-vis religious groups.

Additionally, some authors have brought attention to the fact that there is no mechanical correspondence between the religiosity of FBOs and the religiosity of the services they run. Although some FBOs integrate the religious component within welfare services, others have a more compartmentalized approach. FBOs differ widely in their integration strategies, relative to how beneficiaries are likely to encounter religion in the context of the service (Sider & Unruh, 2004). It is largely recognized that, regardless of their intrinsic religiosity, FBOs might differ significantly regarding the prominence of faith within their programs and their interaction with their beneficiaries—suggesting that FBOs’ religiosity can be better understood as a continuum, manifesting in different forms and with different intensities. While some FBOs approach service delivery as an expression of religion but adopt a passive role in the transmission of faith within programs, others consider it as a means to foster religious ideals or even as a proselytization channel (Bielefeld & Cleveland, 2013; Pavolini et al., 2017).

There is also growing recognition that FBOs’ religiosity is far from being a fixed attribute and that, in some circumstances, FBOs encounter incentives to deemphasize their religious identity. This is particularly likely to occur as a response to governmental regulations about service delivery but also as a consequence of market-driven pressures (Bielefeld & Cleveland, 2013; Chambré, 2001). The impact of secularization and religious change has also received attention. As documented by Zehavi (2013), while the secularization process undergone by many developed countries has not necessarily translated into a decline in the market share of FBOs, it has led to the transformation of their religious identity, resulting from the pressure exerted by a nonreligious public and declining levels of religiosity in their workforce. Such changes are likely to translate into a process of internal secularization, understood as the “dilution of the religious essence of nominally religious institution[s]” (Zehavi, 2013, p. 523).

While operationalizing the role of religion in the faith-based delivery of welfare has proved to be a challenging endeavor, it is possible to identify four consensual propositions that are of direct relevance to the study of faith-based education providers:

1. The need to conceptualize FBOs’ religiosity as a continuous (rather than dichotomous) variable.

2. The dynamic rather than static nature of FBOs’ religiosity.

3. The multidimensional nature of organizational religiosity.

4. The need to distinguish between FBO’s religiosity and the role of religion in service delivery.

Faith-based schools in market contexts

Research on education markets has increasingly drawn attention to the need to examine the responses of education providers operating within competitive environments and to critically interrogate the assumption that schools respond to competitive pressures (i.e., the need to generate enough demand to maintain their market position and guarantee their financial viability) only by increasing the quality of the education provided and by adapting mechanically to families’ preferences as a means to ensure demand (Verger et al., 2016; Waslander et al., 2010). This literature has brought to the fore the different responses developed by school administrators in marketized environments and the multiple rationalities driving them (Jabbar, 2016).

While in this literature we find multiple studies oriented toward categorizing schools’ responses (e.g., Fiske & Ladd, 2001; Jabbar, 2015; Woods et al., 1998), broadly speaking, and as synthesized by Zancajo (2020), such responses deploy into five main domains: market scanning, educational offer differentiation practices, academic performance improvement, student selection, and marketing. Schools’ responses to competitive pressures involving these dimensions are far from homogeneous, and they are shaped by a combination of exogenous and endogenous factors (Diehl & Golann, 2023). Following Zancajo (2020), the key mediating factors influencing schools’ responses to competitive pressures include (1) schools’ position in the local education market (i.e., the reputation and status of schools in their local space; Maroy, 2004), (2) the level of perceived competition (i.e., the degree of competitive pressure perceived by school leaders; Levačić, 2004); and (3) the schools’ enrollment situation (i.e., their situation in terms of school demand; Jabbar, 2016).

In the case of faith-based schools, responses to competition are likely to entail some form of adjustment of their religious identities, something particularly tangible in the domains of educational offer differentiation and marketing practices. Differentiation efforts usually go beyond curricular specialization practices and include the school’s teaching and learning approach and, importantly for the purposes of this paper, the school’s philosophical orientation, understood as the emphasis on their religious missions or a given system of beliefs (Glatter et al., 1997). It follows from this that for faith-based schools, managing their religious orientation is a key dimension of response to competitive pressures (Lubienski, 2006).

Additionally, school differentiation responses might take the form of either substantive or symbolic changes to the educational profile (Lubienski, 2003). This means that for faith-based schools, the negotiation of their religious identity might not necessarily entail actual changes in their pedagogical and organizational practices. Faith-based schools are likely to redefine their religious identity by resourcing to more-symbolic practices, including promotional activities and the transformation of their public image. At the same time, studies on schools’ marketing practices indicate that the decision for faith-based schools to showcase their religious orientation cannot be taken for granted (Dolbec et al., 2022; Zandstra, 2012). Hence, religious schools might have incentives for emphasizing their religious dimension but also for attenuating it and privileging instead other aspects in the configuration of their identity.

Finally, it is important to consider that school responses are not necessarily driven merely by instrumental rationality or strategic behavior. Schools’ responses are frequently shaped by moreexpressive considerations relative to their values, beliefs and normative orientations (Ball & Maroy, 2009). Therefore, schools’ responses to external pressures, including those relative to their religious identity and educational project, should not necessarily be understood as strategic behavior driven by instrumental rationality or a clear intentionality (van Zanten, 2009).

Context

The role of Catholic educational providers in Spain

Catholic institutions have a longstanding tradition as educational providers in Spain. This role was consolidated during General Franco’s dictatorship (1939–1975), when governmental authorities, by renouncing to build up a state-led mass education system, de facto delegated the provision of basic education to the Catholic Church (Bonal, 2000; Boyd‐Barrett, 1991). Insufficient state involvement in direct school provision thus granted the Catholic Church a privileged position as an education provider. This was further enshrined by the 1970 Education Act, which introduced a system of public subsidies for private (predominantly Catholic) schools, consolidated and refined in the late 1970s with the restoration of democracy (Boyd-Barrett, 1995). The 1978 Constitution established the freedom of instruction and the obligation of public authorities to support all types of schools, regardless of their ownership. Although these provisions were open to interpretation and the object of a significant political controversy (Bonal, 1998; Olmedo, 2013), in 1985, the Right to Education Law created a scheme of public subsidies for private schools through renewable multiyear contracts. This scheme formalized the relationship between private school owners and the state. On the one hand, private schools can receive public funds and enjoy high levels of managerial and pedagogical autonomy; on the other, the private subsidized sector needs to follow a series of obligations, such as to provide tuition-free education to families³ and to refrain from engaging in student selection practices (Villarroya, 2003; Zancajo et al., 2022b).

Four decades after these arrangements were adopted, Catholic schools continue to play an important role in the provision of primary and secondary education in Spain (Table 1). Private subsidized education accounts for around 30% of the enrollment and reaches much higher proportions in urban areas (Zancajo et al., 2022b), with Catholic schools being particularly prominent in this sector. In contrast, Catholic schools are much more marginal in the private independent sector, which does not receive public funding and fully depends on families’ contributions for operation. In aggregate terms, such trends do not present significant differences between the region of Catalonia and the average for Spain.

Table 1. Percentage of enrollment in primary and secondary education by type of school and religious orientation for the 2020–2021 academic year.

		Spain		Catalonia
		Primary	Secondary	Primary	Secondary
Total enrollment	Public	67.7	66.4	67.0	64.5
	Private subsidized	28.4	29.6	30.4	33.0
	Private independent	3.9	4.0	2.6	2.5
	Total	100	100	100	100
Private subsidized	Catholic	62.3	62.9	60.4	59.3
	Non-Catholic*	25.6	25.1	31.6	33.6
Private independent	Catholic	1.3	1.3	0.3	0.2
	Non-Catholic*	10.7	10.7	7.7	6.9
	Total	100	100	100	100

*This category comprises nonconfessional and other faith-based schools distinct from Catholic schools.

Source. Own elaboration based on Spanish Ministry of Education (2023) and Escuelas Católicas (2021).

The current regulatory framework establishes religious education as an elective course to be offered by all schools, in line with the 1979 agreements between the Vatican and the Spanish government and with the constitutional provisions on freedom of education. Such arrangements translated into the continuity of a denominational and primarily confessional approach to RE, in which the Catholic Church retains a central role in defining the curriculum and training specialized teachers (Franken, 2023; Gas-Aixendri, 2022; Griera, 2007). Non-Catholic religious instruction appears to be a rather marginal phenomenon, despite the agreements signed in the early 1990s with the Spanish Muslim, Protestant, and Jewish communities. In consequence, the Catholic Church is considered to have a de facto monopoly on religious education in both public and private subsidized schools (Dietz, 2007; Garreta-Bochaca et al., 2019).

The proportion of students taking RE as a subject in primary and secondary education is much lower in Catalonia than the whole of Spain. In Spain, 60.5% of students were taking religious courses in primary education and 56.6%, in secondary education in the 2021–2022 academic year; whereas in Catalonia these percentages reached only 38.6% in primary education and 39.3% in secondary education. Nevertheless, figures for the privately subsidized sector show a different pattern. Whereas in Spain the enrollment in RE courses in private subsidized schools is 85.6% and 84.3% in primary and secondary education, respectively, in Catalonia, the share of students enrolled in RE courses in this type of schools is 94.3% in primary education and 96.9% in secondary education (Spanish Ministry of Education, 2023).

A changing environment

In the past four decades, Spain has experienced significant and rapid societal changes. Three main social phenomena have particularly affected the educational system. The first of them is the increasing level of secularization of society, with a steady decline in the percentage of the population who identify as Catholic (Pérez-Agote, 2012). While in the late 1970s, almost 90% of the population identified as Catholic, this percentage has decreased dramatically since the late 1980s (Figure 1). Catalonia has historically featured as the most secular region of Spain (Griera, 2016). Indeed, the decline of the population identifying as Catholic is significantly higher in Catalonia than in the Spain overall. Following Astor (2020), this difference between Catalan society and Spain remains statistically significant even when controlling for age, education, and socioeconomic status.

Figure 1. Percentage of the population identifying as Catholic.

Source. Adapted from Astor (2020) and CIS data.

A second sociodemographic trend impacting the education system is the rapid increase in the migrant population since the early 2000s. While Spain was isolated from the international migrant flows experienced by other countries during the 20th century, the migrant population increased dramatically at the beginning of the 21st century, with the percentage of the resident foreign population⁴ rising from 2.3% in 2000 to 11.7% in 2022. This increase has been even sharper in Spain’s most economically developed regions, such as Catalonia, where the share of the resident foreign population grew from 2.9% to 16.3% during the same period (National Institute of Statistics, 2023). The demographic profile of the migrant population, mostly young adults often accompanied by children, directly impacted the education system. In Catalonia, the percentage of foreign students enrolled in primary and secondary education grew from 2.7% of total enrollment in the academic year 2000–2001 to 16% in 2020–2021. An important share of these students are originally from Northern Africa and South Asia, which has significantly increased the religious diversity of the school population in the educational system (Catalan Department of Education, 2022).

Finally, a more recent sociodemographic trend is the rapid demographic decline experienced by many European countries. In Spain, birth rates have featured among the lowest in the world in the past decades (World Bank, 2023); accordingly, the school-age population is decreasing significantly and might compromise the viability of some schools. The number of 3-year-old children enrolled in the Catalan education system decreased by 13.6% between 2007 and 2022 (Catalan Department of Education, 2023), and according to population projections, the decline in the school-age population will accelerate in the next 20 years (Idescat, 2022). This is already observable in the Catalan education system, with the number of students in preschool and primary education declining and some private subsidized schools having to close due to the lack of demand.⁵

Data sources and analytical strategy

Our study aims to shed light on (1) how faith-based school providers negotiate their religious identity in an educational market context influenced by increasing secularization, religious diversity, and a significant reduction of the school-age population and (2) whether and how this translates into different approaches to RE. This research draws on a case study conducted in Catalonia, a region wherein some social changes have been particularly accentuated compared to other Spanish regions.

The evidence presented relies primarily on qualitative data—specifically, a corpus of semistructured interviews with representatives of a sample of faith-based school networks operating in Catalonia, complemented by a review of self-presentation materials (i.e., websites, mission statements, and other publicly available documents⁶). We also use administrative data for sampling purposes and to characterize the school population.

In Spain, the ownership and management of private subsidized schools correspond to an individual or organization referred to as titular⁷—here referred to as School Management Organization (SMO). Frequently, the same SMO is responsible for multiple private subsidized schools, constituting a school network (SN). The number of schools encompassed by each SN varies greatly, ranging from more than 30 to as few as 2.⁸ For the purposes of the study, we selected a sample of 11 SNs offering at least primary or secondary education. The main criteria informing the selection were the size of the SN, the nature of the founding religious community (i.e., male and female orders, dioceses, and parishes), and the nature of the SMO in charge of the SN (religious communities, civil or canonical foundations). Our sample encompasses a heterogeneous corpus of SNs according to such criteria, as indicated by Table 2. Also, the SNs included in our sample are considerably diverse regarding the per capita income level of the areas in which the schools are located (Table 3).

Table 2. Overview of analyzed school networks.

Size of the SN (number of schools)	Large-sized (>10 schools)	Mid-sized (5–10 schools)	Small-sized (<5 schools)	Total
	5	4	2	11
Founding religious community	Diocese or parish	Female order or congregation	Male order or congregation	Total
	2	5	4	11
Legal nature of the SMO in charge	Canonical foundation	Civil foundation	Religious community	Total
	3	6	2	11

Source. Authors’ elaboration based on the Catalan directory of schools and public subsidies for private school data (Catalan Department of Education, 2023).

Table 3. Distribution of networks’ schools by income level of the census track (%).

	Per capita income level
School network	Low	Middle-low	Middle	Middle-high	High
E01	0	19.2	73.1	7.7	0
E02	0	22.2	55.6	22.2	0
E03	0	10	60	30	0
E04	0	26.3	42.1	26.3	5.3
E05	2.8	22.2	55.6	19.4	0
E06	0	0	50	12.5	37.5
E07	16.7	33.3	25	16.7	8.3
E08	50	0	0	50	0
E09	5.3	15.8	47.4	15.8	15.8
E10	0	0	50	25	25
E11	0	0	80	20	0

Source. Authors’ elaboration based on the Catalan directory of schools (Catalan Department of Education, 2023) and the Spanish Household Income Distribution Atlas (National Institute of Statistics, 2020).

Census tracks are the smallest administrative units used in Spanish statistical registers. These units divide each municipality into units, which range between 1000 and 2500 inhabitants. Income level was categorized based on a constructed index in which 100 represents the average per capita income level for all Catalan census tracks. Based on this index, the categories in the table correspond to the following per capita income levels: <60 (Low), ≥60 - <80 (Middle-low), ≥80 - <120 (Middle), ≥120 - <160 (Middle-high), ≥ 160 (High).

While the different schools integrated within a given SN are presumed to share a similar ethos and approach to religious identity, the relative levels of symbolic and functional integration exhibited by the analyzed SNs and the autonomy enjoyed by schools vis-à-vis their respective SMOs are quite heterogeneous in practice. This is in fact a factor that might contribute to explaining some of the patterns discussed in the results, and on which we return in the concluding section.

For each SN, an interview was conducted with a representative of the SMO—typically, a member of the managing board. Interviews had an average length of 80 minutes and were conducted in Catalan.⁹ The interviews allowed us to identify the narratives, rationales, and practices through which SNs respond to the changing sociodemographic context. All the interviews were transcribed and analyzed following thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012). The content analysis followed a flexible coding strategy (Deterding & Waters, 2021), combining a hybrid approach, inductive and deductive. Codes were grouped according to the following general code families: (1) religious expression and identity; (2) social transformations perceived as challenging or as a trigger of change; (3) autonomy of the SN from the founding religious community; (4) role of the SMO and support offered to schools; (5) schools’ socioeconomic status and position within the market.

We also reviewed the websites of the SNs and other self-presentation materials, with particular attention to their mission statements and comparable documents. These documents were coded considering the following dimensions: references to relation with founding religious community, religious symbolism, religious language, references to non-Christian traditions, and approach to Christian values.

Renegotiating religious identity in the marketplace

This section presents a typology of approaches to religious identity deployed by a sample of Catholic providers operating in the Catalan educational market, based on two main components—namely, their approach to RE and other forms of religious expression. The approaches identified are inductively derived, based on the RE approach privileged by the examined SNs but also considering how religion is articulated as a component of their identity. Table 4 summarizes the key characteristics of each approach and the triggering factors and enabling conditions associated with each of them.

Table 4. Typology of SNs according to their approach to religious identity.

Religious identity	Triggering factors and enabling conditions
Confessional: RE based on the tenets of Catholicism; organic integration of Catholicism into educational practices	Socially affluent school composition and strong or secure position in the educational market Relatively low autonomy from the founding religious community
Culture-centric: RE oriented toward providing an understanding of the history, texts, and manifestations of the Catholic tradition; emphasis on the cultural expression of Catholicism in educational practices	Heterogeneous school composition and relatively weak market position Medium or high autonomy from the founding religious community
Value-centric: RE focused on axiological and spiritual dimensions of religious traditions; focus on the role and potential of religious traditions in values education	Significant share of students from low socioeconomic and migrant backgrounds and secure position in the market High autonomy from the founding religious community and high organizational capacity

Source. Authors’ elaboration.

Confessional approach

Approach to RE and other forms of religious expression

A first group of SNs deploys a confessional approach to RE and provides religious instruction based on the tenets of Catholicism. This approach favors students familiarizing themselves with the sacred texts, rites, and liturgies specific to Catholicism. While interviewed representatives generally acknowledge that religious instruction cannot be forced on those students not wishing to receive it, RE is presented as the default option or even, in some cases, as mandatory in practical terms. SNs within this group feature among the few that make explicit references to their evangelizing mission and/or the transmission of Catholic values in their mission statements and self-presentation materials (E03, E07, E11). These SNs are explicit in their aim to nurture students into the Catholic tradition—one interviewee remarked vehemently that “we don’t do religious culture, we do religion” (E07), and another declared that “we don’t want to renounce doing religion” (E04).

SNs within this first group also favor an organic integration of Catholicism into daily school life. The moral and values education offered by these SNs are presented as influenced, at least to some degree, by the Catholic tradition. Religious festivities continue to be celebrated in a traditional way, and some liturgical ceremonies are organized, albeit offered generally on an optional basis (E04, E06, E07, E11). Therefore, the Catholic orientation of these SNs materializes in the daily practices of schools and is highly visible. As reported by an interviewee, religious identity is expected to permeate multiple aspects of school life:

In the end, the spiritual dimension needs to be cultivated through the facts—instruction, praxis, celebrations. And celebrations include the sacraments, for instance […] The three elements are necessary to make sense [of spirituality/religious identity]. (E06)

The preservation of a confessional approach and the centrality of the religious dimension to the school identity should not be assumed to lead to an unmovable approach to RE. Indeed, these SNs are often eager to highlight their willingness to adapt to current times, noting that their approach to religious instruction is far removed from a catechistic approach, and routinely emphasizing that faith needs to be proposed rather than imposed (E03, E04, E06, E11). In this spirit, SNs in this group often put some effort into making the religious component more palatable to the families they cater to. In self-presentation and promotional materials, it is possible to observe some effort to present religion as an opportunity for the personal and spiritual development of students and as a tool to raise awareness of broader societal challenges (E04, E06, E07, E11). Also, importantly, some of these SNs do not necessarily bring to the fore the Catholic dimension in their self-presentation or promotional materials.

Triggering factors and enabling conditions

One of the most distinctive features of these SNs is their organizational and institutional proximity to religious communities. SNs in this group are often run by canonical foundations¹⁰ (E06, E07, E11) or directly by religious congregations (E04). While the share of clergy and ordained staff within schools and governing boards has been steadily declining, the governance structures and decision-making routines of these foundations continue to be organically tied to the founding religious communities (E03, E04, E06, E07, E11). Presumably, the persistence of such connections might contribute to the high alignment of such SNs to a confessional perspective.

Another element shared across different SNs in this category is their relatively secure market position. Although, as per the interviewees, these SNs might encompass some struggling (i.e., recurrently undersubscribed) schools, this is not a cross-cutting dynamic. The decreasing enrollment numbers exhibited by some schools appears to be a recent phenomenon, and it is associated with a broader demographic decline rather than with a low position of such schools in their respective local education markets (E03, E06, E07). Hence, while the enrollment level of these SNs is no longer perceived as optimal, such dynamics do not operate as an incentive strong enough to force substantial changes in their religious approach. Relatedly, most of these schools cater primarily to middle-class families and, in some cases, upper-class families. Indeed, they are located in relatively affluent areas and have a residual or null presence in low-income areas (cf. Table 3 above).

In combination, the low levels of social diversity, a generally balanced enrollment situation, and the high status occupied by most schools in their respective local education markets place such SNs in a comparatively privileged position that enables them to stick to a confessional approach,¹¹ even though they consider that this can hardly operate as an effective selling point. Indeed, there is generalized awareness that the Catholic character of these SNs does not feature prominently in the demand rationales of families opting for such schools. Interviewees often acknowledge that families privilege other elements, including a strong academic reputation, the promise of personalized attention, or the pedagogic project (E03, E04, E06, E07, E11).

Culture-centric approach

Approach to RE and other forms of religious expression

A second group of SNs emphasizes the cultural dimension of Catholicism in its approach to RE. In contrast with the previous category, this means considering RE as a form of religious literacy oriented toward providing a basic understanding of the history, texts, and manifestations of the Catholic tradition rather than initiating and nurturing students into the Catholic faith. The approach of these SNs toward RE is characterized by their focus on the cultural relevance of the Catholic religion in Catalan society and the validity of the social values that it promotes. Such culture-centric approach is seen as a means of reconciling the increasing secularization of Catalan society with the Catholic origins of these schools, as noted by the following interviewee:

We know that Catalan society is a very secular society, but we have cultural references, and we have references that obviously emanate from the Christian tradition. In other words, we are strongly marked by Christianity in everything […]. But society has obviously evolved a lot, and we evolve with society. (E02)

The explicit rejection of more-traditional approaches to RE is one of the primary characteristics shared by these SNs: “We don’t teach religion, we teach religious culture” (E09). Their mission statements and other materials stress the open or comprehensive approach to RE in their schools (E02, E08, E10), with some of them noting that RE should address the increasing religious diversity of Catalan society (E08, E10). However, despite recognizing the need to attune to growing levels of religious pluralism, RE in all these SNs continues to be primarily structured around Catholic values and traditions, while other religions (mainly monotheistic ones) are included in the curriculum in a complementary or secondary way.

In practice, the cultural approach to RE has varying implications at the curricular level and in the school’s activity. Broadly speaking, it is possible to discern two main subgroups. On the one hand, we find those SNs able to discursively articulate an alternative approach to RE, distancing themselves from confessional models. These SNs do not carry out Catholic ceremonies (or at least they do not deem them central to their identity), and their mission statements or public materials hardly refer to the evangelizing dimension of their educational practice (E09, E02). They have developed a well-structured RE curriculum and have prepared some pedagogical materials centered on religious culture. On the other hand, we find SNs that show greater difficulties in translating the cultural approach to RE into a coherent curricular and pedagogical practice. These SNs adapt their contents and educational practices on an ad hoc basis rather than as a result of a systematic effort to renew their curricular and pedagogical approach (E08, E10). Liturgical activities (e.g., communion) are offered on an opt-in basis (E08, E10), but they continue to play a relevant role in the activity of the schools. These Catholic activities do not appear to be integral to schools’ identity but rather something the schools do out of inertia.

Triggering factors and enabling conditions

One of the main drivers mentioned by interviewees to explain the Catholic-centric but cultural-oriented approach is the increasing secularization of Catalan society, particularly among young families. These SNs resort to a cultural approach to RE as a means to guarantee their viability in an increasingly competitive market-oriented context but also as a way to make sense of their role as faith-based education institutions in a changing social context (E02, E09, E10). The focus on the cultural elements of religion allows these SNs to grapple with secularization trends but also with growing levels of religious diversity, arguing that a culture-centric approach might facilitate the integration of migrant background students professing a religion other than Catholicism (E09, E10).

Another factor enabling this cultural turn is SN’s autonomy from the religious congregation that has historically managed the schools. While in most cases SNs consider that the founding religious communities share the need to develop a more comprehensive approach to RE, they also recognize that the fact they are organized as independent institutions (mainly foundations), along with the declining role of congregation members therein, has made it easier for them to adopt a more secular perspective of RE (E02, E09, E10).

In contrast to the confessional approach, SNs falling into this category are characterized by a certain degree of socioeconomic heterogeneity in their schools’ composition. Interviewees note that, within the same SNs, some schools primarily cater to middle-class families, while others enroll significant percentages of socially disadvantaged and migrant background students. This heterogeneity can also be observed in the socioeconomic level of the areas in which the schools of these SNs are located (Table 3) and in their enrollment situation and market position. Only one of these SNs has a predominantly strong position in the local education markets where its schools are located (E09). Conversely, the other three SNs encompass a greater number of schools in an unstable market situation, mainly associated with the process of demographic decline (E02, E08, E10).

In this context, marketing and communication are perceived as essential to guarantee the schools’ viability. Indeed, these SNs recognize that “no one comes, or almost no one comes, because it is a religious school” (E08) and even perceive their Catholic origins as a potentially alienating factor. Those SNs in a more precarious market situation (E08, E02, E10) might explicitly avoid using Catholic terminology and symbols in their promotional materials. Marketing is thus used to overcome the stereotypes related to Catholic schools (commonly associated with traditionalism or an excessive academic orientation) and prove that their schools can meet the new demands of families:

The greatest effort is that people break with their conception that we are an excessively traditionalist school. We know that the name does not help us because, obviously, you say “[Name of the SN]” and it is associated with a typology, and that surely sets you 30 years back … And above all, it is this effort to say: “Listen, our education is an education that is perfect for the time we are living in, the 21st century. It is not an education from the 19th or the 20th century, it is an education of our time.” (E02)

Finally, the capacity of SMOs to support schools is key to explaining differences in SNs’ ability to articulate a consistent curricular approach, giving rise to the two subgroups discussed above. On the one hand, SMOs with greater organizational capacity¹² (e.g., organic structures, well-staffed management teams) facilitate the articulation of alternative approaches to RE (E02, E09). Their ability to offer ample support to schools is crucial in overcoming the resistance of some schools to adopting the cultural approach to RE (E02). These dynamics can be observed in SNs with more experience operating as a structured network and a larger number of schools, allowing for the generation of economies of scale. On the other hand, a less articulated discourse and lower levels of curricular guidance are observed in SNs integrated into broader networks operating at the Spanish level, which do not necessarily share this alternative approach to RE (E08, E10). This significantly reduces the capacity of SMOs to support schools in implementing a cultural-centric approach to RE and to ensure that this approach is embraced and adopted by all schools in the network.

Value-centric approach

Approach to RE and other forms of religious expression

If the previous approach emphasizes the cultural dimension of RE, this one further dilutes the confessional component of RE, focusing instead on the axiological and spiritual dimensions of RE, and following the precept that social values, spirituality, and transcendence cut across different religions and cultures. These SNs have often gone through profound transformations in the last decades, including a process of laicization in their governance structures and of decoupling from the founding congregations. In the light of secularization and increasing religious diversity, secular leaders have persuaded religious communities about the necessity to forgo a confessional approach to secure their educational relevance and organizational survival. Such transformation is sometimes justified by an explicit critique of the immobilism of the Catholic Church, perceived to be at the root of an obsolete form of RE.

These SNs do not neglect their Catholic origins but attempt to adapt them to current times and even to reduce the centrality of Catholicism (E01). Nonetheless, this is far from saying that they have removed the essence of the Catholic religion from their educational offerings. Rather, religion, in the form of values education, humanism, and spirituality, is highly present in their educational project and operates as a key selling point. Hence, such approach is characterized by the emphasis on the implicit values of RE, such as social commitment, dialogue, and tolerance—rather than the explicit teaching of the religious doctrine or the transmission of the Catholic system of beliefs.

We are obviously a Christian school, but to us, opening up, and giving a global view of things, are in line with deeply evangelical values. We always start with a methodology that departs from values […] From this [an example close to students], we extract a value. We explain how this value is treated in the Christian tradition. But we do not stay only with the Christian tradition. Rather, what we do is discuss the multitude of approaches that different religions have taken on this value. (E05)

This approach to RE aims to promote self-awareness, introspection, the cultivation of spirituality and personal growth among students. To this end, these SNs rely on practices and activities such as meditation, silence, mindfulness, and self-reflection, which go beyond RE courses and permeate other subjects. At the curricular level, for instance, this approach manifests in teaching about nonreligious world-known figures portrayed as inspiring role models and as analogous to the figure of Jesus Christ but more contemporary and religiously neutral (E01). They also emphasize nonreligious themes they consider to be aligned with a humanistic understanding of RE, including global citizenship or education for sustainable development (E05). These SNs are also willing to take advantage of religious dates, not in a liturgical manner, but to resignify and adapt them by bringing to the fore their spiritual or introspective dimension (E01).

Triggering factors and enabling conditions

One factor that has contributed to this transformation is the strong organizational capacity of these SMOs, which has played a strategic role in leading this ambitious transformation toward a more eclectic and value-centric approach to RE. To this purpose, they have promoted internal debate and reflection processes in the respective networks. They have also created educational materials and guidelines, translating this value-centric approach at the school level, and routinely provide teacher training and pedagogic advice to schools, among other initiatives.

As shown in Table 3, an important share of schools from these SNs are located in middle-low- and middle-income areas, with a very limited presence in high-income areas. Also importantly, these SNs are connected to female congregations and orders that are emphatic about their prosocial origins. Indeed, interviewees from these SNs stress their social mission as a central component of their identity as educational institutions and often draw attention to the socially sensitive policies implemented by their schools—for instance, the establishment of low fees or the collaboration with public administration in the attention of socially disadvantaged schools. Some interviewees claim that such a prosocial approach allows these SNs to attract an important share of socially disadvantaged students and enroll a growing share of migrant population including students who profess religions other than Catholicism. Nonetheless, on average, most of the schools in these networks enjoy a relatively good position in their local education markets—as can be deduced from their social reputation, level of demand, and academic performance.

In this regard, the educational approach value-centric SNs advance responds to the need to simultaneously cater to the demands and expectations of two different targeted populations: on the one hand, autochthonous working- and middle-class families who are increasingly secular and interested in innovative pedagogic methods and socio-emotional education and, on the other, first- and second-generation immigrant families with high educational expectations that often adhere to faiths other than Catholicism. Although they may have different understandings of education quality, these families have in common a preference for values education stripped of the doctrinal component of religion and, in particular, Catholic education. Accordingly, the marketing practices and self-presentation materials of these SNs need to be interpreted as an exercise to bridge the interests and preferences of these two groups of parents to continue attracting both to their schools. This approach is considered necessary for the schools to maintain a stable demand and a heterogeneous social composition.

Discussion and conclusions

This paper has examined how faith-based education providers operating in a market context negotiate their religious identities. Building on a case study conducted in Catalonia, our findings indicate that there is considerable heterogeneity in the approaches to RE and religious expression deployed by Catholic schools’ networks. This diversity needs to be understood in connection with two main dimensions: on the one hand, the market position and socioeconomic level of the school population of the faith-based education providers; on the other, the SNs’ organizational capacity and their relationship with the founding religious communities.

These results add to our understanding of the plurality of schools’ responses to both religious diversity and competitive pressures. As documented by different authors, the landscape of RE models across Europe appears to be increasingly complex and informed by different political paradigms, with the monoconfessional model of RE being increasingly abandoned in favor of other approaches (Dupont, 2022; Franken, 2017). The consequences of such changes in terms of social justice and intercultural contact have been amply discussed, giving rise to a vibrant debate around the challenges of religious governance in education (Hunter-Henin, 2011; Sears & Herriot, 2016). While this strand of research has mainly concentrated on state schools, this study turns the focus to nonstate religious providers. Our findings suggest the need to delve further into the responses of nonstate religious schools, given their impact on the educational experiences and sense of belonging of a significant share of students. In a context in which nonstate religious schools represent a substantial share of the education supply, as it is the case of several European countries, these are particularly relevant questions with direct implications for the social cohesion, inclusion, educational equity, and social mixing goals that educational systems may pursue.

This study contributes also to scholarship on the behaviors and rationalities of the supply side of educational markets (Jabbar, 2016; van Zanten, 2009). Efforts at characterizing the nonstate sector tend to treat the religious orientation of nonstate schools as a dichotomic and fixed attribute, glossing over important differences with implications for public and policy debates. Our findings point to the need to critically interrogate assumptions on the religiosity of faith-based schools. Particularly in a market context, the tight coupling of religious communities and faith-based schools cannot be taken for granted. The secularization of society has been paralleled by a secularization of the governance of church-affiliated schools, which in market contexts has favored the dilution and profound transformation of the confessional understanding of RE. In addition, the analysis of Catholic education providers in Catalonia brings to the fore the multidimensional nature of the religiosity attribute. The SNs examined in this paper differed not only in their approach to RE but also in the visibility they give to religion in different dimensions of school life, with some of them even exhibiting a certain decoupling between the schools’ religious ethos and their external communication efforts.

Overall, the highly divergent approaches to RE and religious expressions that coexist within the Catholic sector are indicative that current debates on the merits and drawbacks of school choice for a social justice agenda cannot remain only on a theoretical or philosophical level. As Wilson (2017) argues, debates around the compatibility between educational pluralism, social cohesion, and educational markets need to take an empirically informed approach—in this case, through a fine-grained understanding of faith-based providers and how they configure their religious identities. Our findings also indicate that any attempt at regulating nonstate schools’ religious expression to guarantee inclusion and social mixing needs to consider the multidimensional and rapidly evolving nature of their religious ethos and the fact that these features tend to be magnified in a market environment.

Finally, and given its exploratory nature, this study is subject to certain limitations that point to directions for future research. Firstly, we have focused on the discourse of SN representatives—however, understanding the uneven role of religiosity in the behavior of educational providers requires addressing how the approaches espoused by SNs are enacted in schools, specifically, at the level of school and classroom practices. Secondly, given that instrumental rationalities cannot fully explain the diversity of approaches to RE and religious identity exhibited by faith-based education providers, expressive factors need to be analyzed in more detail. These include the particularities of the founding religious communities (including their mission and charism) but also broader trends affecting organized religion (e.g., the decline in vocations or the reorganization of congregations). While disentangling instrumental and expressive drivers raises important empirical challenges and is beyond the scope of this paper, this remains a key question to understanding the behavior of religious educational providers in a market context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Clara Fontdevila’s research is funded by the British Academy through the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship [PF22\220003]. Adrian Zancajo’s research is supported by funding from the 2020 Ramón y Cajal program [RYC2020-028668-I].

Notes on contributors

Clara Fontdevila

Clara Fontdevila is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Education of the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on the comparative analysis of education policy and politics, with a particular interest in the origins and contemporary restructuring of education markets and the expansion and institutionalization of learning assessments.

Adrián Zancajo

Adrián Zancajo is a Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Department of Sociology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research focuses on education markets and privatization policy reforms and on how these policies impact educational inequalities, with a particular focus on school segregation.

Antoni Verger

Antoni Verger is a Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a research fellow at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA). His research examines the relationship between governance institutions and education policy through a comparative policy analysis lens. Over the years, his work has specialized in the study of education privatization and school governance reforms.

Notes

¹ The terms religious and faith-based are used interchangeably in this paper.

² Following international conventions, private schools (also referred here as nonstate schools) are those controlled and managed by a nongovernmental organization, or whose governing board is primarily made up of members not selected by a public agency (UOE, 2019).

³ Despite this legal prohibition, most private subsidized schools in Catalonia de facto charge fees to parents—often in the form of donations, contributions and payments for extracurricular and complementary activities that are only nominally voluntary (Gortazar et al., 2024).

⁴ Used here as a proxy for migrant background since Spanish official statistical records usually do not register more precise indicators.

⁵ Saura, V. (2022, July 13). L’escola concertada catalana perd 15 centres en cinc anys. Diari de l’educació. https://diarieducacio.cat/lescola-concertada-catalana-perd-15-centres-en-cinc-anys/

⁶ These are documents oriented at capturing the religious and pedagogic approach currently privileged by the studied SNs. As such, most of them have been prepared during the last few years. While some of them remain undated, the fact they are publicly displayed on school websites suggests they are relevant to understanding the approaches currently prevalent within these networks.

⁷ Roughly translated as holder or owner.

⁸ These figures refer to SMOs operating exclusively within the Catalan region; however, in some cases, the SMO in charge is also responsible for schools across different Spanish regions.

⁹ Interview quotes featuring in the next section have been translated into English by the authors for the purpose of this publication.

¹⁰ Canonical foundations, unlike civil foundations, are subject to canon law. One of the most important implications is that these foundations must be presided over by an religious male, often a bishop or priest.

¹¹ Despite this general trend, some SNs in this group serve a significant share of disadvantaged students (some of which would be professing faiths other than Catholicism) or encompass schools in a struggling market position. The fact that they continue to adhere to a confessional approach in which Catholicism permeates virtually all aspects of school life (E07, E11) could be explained by the lack of institutional distance and autonomy vis-à-vis their respective religious communities.

¹² Used in reference to the capacity of a given institution to deliver its mission and meet its goals. SMOs’ organizational capacity is crucially affected by the human and financial resources available to them, as well as by the communication, decision-making and leadership structures in place.