Project Pippo is a parent-led effort to open Holy Family School Oxford as soon as feasible: an independent, co-educational secondary school with a Catholic ethos, built on three pillars — a living Catholic faith, classical education, and a fee model that prioritises affordability over bells and whistles.
We have launched our Seed Fund: £50,000 by December 2026 for the groundwork that must be in place before we can open — our registration application to the Department for Education, legal work, first marketing materials and headteacher recruitment.
Oxford has shaped some of the greatest Catholic minds in the English-speaking world — Newman, Hopkins, Tolkien among them. Yet today, some 40,000 Catholics live within fifteen miles of the city, including roughly 3,600 of secondary-school age, and only one state-funded Catholic secondary school serves them.
Holy Family School Oxford will close that gap — not with another unaffordable private school, but with a school that has character, built to serve the needs of local families and provide an excellent rounded education.
The hundred families who have already told us they want this school represent 235 children, and 195 of them are ten or younger. Most of the demand we have found is still ahead of us, in the years when the school will be growing into its full shape.
Set deliberately near the point our family survey identified as realistically affordable for around half of our survey respondents. This is not an aspiration to discount the fees to this level eventually, but a design feature, part of the vision we have for the school.
For prospective parents: fees, curriculum and the founding deposit →"To support families in providing their children with an outstanding classical education, alive to the Faith and rooted in virtues — placing Christ at the centre of school life, so that our pupils may flourish and, with God's grace, transform the world." Project Pippo — Founding Vision
Every decision — curriculum, staffing, premises, fees — is tested against these three pillars.
Daily prayer, the sacraments and the ordinary teaching of the Church run through the whole school day. Pastoral care and enrichment activities are built around forming character.
Formation is not an extra timetabled once a week. It is the rhythm of the day, and the way pupils are taught to treat one another.
Our survey told us that a clear majority favour classical education - a curriculum that incorporates great texts, latin, logic, rhetoric and grammar, looking towards beauty, truth and goodness through cross curricular learning.
Designed with input from experienced Catholic educators, and shaped by Oxford's own eight-hundred-year intellectual tradition.
Tuition is set to what we believe many families can pay, not what the market will bear. That means lean overheads, careful stewardship of every pound, and — crucially — donor support in the early years, and eventually to support bursaries.
Roughly half of families surveyed told us £6,000 (excl. VAT) was realistically affordable. That is exactly where we have set our target.
Azure, a chevron Or between in chief a mullet of eight points and a lily, and in base the Chi-Rho, all Argent.
Our crest, the House of Nazareth, shows the Holy Family at home: Christ at the centre, sheltered by Mary and Joseph. A gold chevron, shaped like the rafters of a roof, gathers them into one household, and each charge stands for one member of the Family.
Our three school pillars are represented there too: the Chi-Rho for a Catholic ethos, the star (Seat of Wisdom) for classical education, and the chevron, both roof and carpenter's square, for the ordinary household the school is built to serve.
The motto comes from St Luke's Gospel (2:40, 52), where these two words frame the Finding in the Temple and sum up Christ's childhood at Nazareth. Sapientia is the wisdom a classical education pursues; gratia is the life of faith that gives it purpose.
We are a small group of Oxfordshire parents — none of us professional fundraisers — who simply want this school to exist for our own children, and for families like ours. The core team give their time voluntarily and meet every week; between us we bring professional experience in education, medicine, finance, technology and operations.
BA (Hons), MA, PhD
Stephen is Deputy Chief Responsible Investment Officer at the Church of England Pensions Board. He was previously Education Officer at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, and holds a PhD in philosophy from King's College London.
MBChB, MRCP, DTM&H
Siobhan is a physician specialising in neurological rehabilitation, formerly a consultant at the Oxford Centre for Enablement. She serves on the Oratory Outreach committee, supporting those in need locally.
MSc Telecommunications Engineering
Pablo is Chief Operating Officer of an Oxford-area technology firm and a former Managing Director. He is involved in educational programmes for young people and families, and was Vice-Principal of an all-through school in Bilbao.
BSc (Hons) Network Computing
Max is a Technical Solutions Architect at a Global Networking and Cyber Security company, specialising in cyber and AI security. He and Elsa have three young children and a sleepy fox-red Labrador called Minley.
BSc (Hons) Psychology
Elsa has supported children with behavioural and developmental needs at a local primary school, and co-chairs a local school charity. Bilingual and originally from Venezuela, she is mother to three young children.
MA (Courtauld), MA (Hons) Oxon
Meg, a mother of six girls, has worked in art history and archives, including at the British Museum and the Attingham Trust. She holds a Diploma in Catechesis from Maryvale.
Double BA (Law, Political Science), Master's, GDL
Rocío is a qualified secondary school teacher in the UK, with a background in law and the management of social projects. She and her husband live in Oxfordshire with their three children.
We have reached an understanding in principle with the Carmelite community at Boars Hill, just south of Oxford, for Holy Family School Oxford to use their facilities. Set in seventeen acres of woodland, the Priory would give the school a dedicated space on weekdays: classrooms, a chapel, a meeting room and, of course, room to learn and play outdoors.
This is a temporary home rather than a permanent one. We do not yet know how many years we will be there, but it is what allows the school to open at all — a real place, with room for our first year groups, while we look for somewhere the school can settle for good.
The terms are still being discussed and nothing is final yet. We ask for your patience and your prayers while we and the community work through the details together. If you have any questions, please bring them to us at info@hfsoxford.org.uk rather than to the Priory, so that the friars' life of prayer and hospitality can carry on undisturbed.
Boars Hill is also where Matthew Arnold looked north to Oxford's "dreaming spires".
Each phase unlocks the next. Your gift today goes toward whichever is open — right now, that's the Seed Fund.
Already complete: legal formation of the company and its governance.
Founding families' refundable deposits, collected from October 2026, will confirm the final decision to open. How the deposit works →
We're not doing this alone — see below.
We are in advanced discussions with a strongly mission-aligned foundation about a long-term partnership to sustain the school financially through its early years, until it reaches break-even — typically three to five years for a school of this kind.
That conversation is exactly where your gift matters most. Seed, pre-opening funding, and early refundable deposits from people like you let us enter that partnership from a position of strength — with a site secured, regulatory hurdles cleared, a curriculum built, and momentum behind us — rather than from necessity. It is also what lets us hold the line on an affordable fee for founding families, rather than raising it to make the numbers work for someone else.
Right now, every gift goes to the Seed Fund: the groundwork that must be in place before we can register and open the school. Once we are open, giving will help us keep fees low and fund bursaries.
Every gift goes to the Seed Fund as a whole; these examples show the kind of costs it covers.
Give online by card, or by bank transfer — get in touch at info@hfsoxford.org.uk and we'll arrange whatever is easiest for you.
