Educate me about catholic secondary schools please

Why would you put your kid in a catholic school if you're not catholic?

I was educated in Catholic schools and have actively avoided that option for my children. Won’t comment on current teaching as my experiences were decades ago, but there are some things worth considering are still be true. Depending on where you live, the catchment areas can be very large - so children may end up with friends spread out across a wide area, or even a whole county. Also, the slightly different funding structure for Catholic schools can result in a lot of pressure on parents to contribute in different ways.
I’d also be very careful about what results are actually telling you and try to find accurate local context. Not sure about anywhere else, but in some London Catholic primaries, there’s huge tutoring pressure to prepare children for selective secondaries. The selection process seems to be functioning to select only the children who are given the advantage of intensive tutoring and are willing to work. Those children should do well anywhere, so great results from those secondaries doesn’t necessarily mean they are brilliant schools.

Do you want your child to have a catholic education?If not it may not be the right school. It sounds like you don’t agree with a lot of the fundamental elements of a religious school education.

From my experience (20 years ago), we said prayers twice per day at registration. No one actively refused but whether everyone engaged I don’t know. Also had extra masses on certain feast days like Ash Wednesday, these were compulsory. My DC go to a catholic primary and this is still the case for them today.

RE GCSE was compulsory; yes to learning about original sin, purgatory, hell, 10 commandments etc. We had to know The Creed off by heart & what it meant.

We were taught about contraception; I think that’s compulsory for all schools.