This research aims to look at how a group of primary head teachers' in the North West of England perceive the Catholic nature of their schools and how they give their account of Catholic education for twenty-first century Britain. They go on to describe their feelings about the mission of their school. The head teachers' views of how they identified their school's Catholicism are critiqued in the light of Catholic Church teaching on the nature of Catholic schools and compared to academic and theological models of Catholic education.