Teenage Fanclub had been formed in 1989 as a continuation of what guitarists Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley and drummer Francis Macdonald had been doing in their previous band The Boy Hairdressers.

[5] According to Blake, "the main influences on that first Teenage Fanclub album would've been Sonic Youth's Evol and Daydream Nation, those records.

"[4] Even though the band now had an album’s worth of material, they weren’t completely happy with it, so they decided to re-record four songs at Suite 16 in Rochdale with O'Hare on drums.

[2][19] In a retrospective review, Jason Ankeny of AllMusic noted that A Catholic Education's "gloriously sloppy and sludgy sound" was far removed from the "sparkling power pop" of their later albums.

Instead, the album "prefigures the emergence of grunge, its viscous melodies and squalling guitars owing far more to Neil Young than Big Star."

Ankeny concluded that despite the album's differences in attitude and approach, "there's no mistaking the effortless melodicism that remains the hallmark of all Teenage Fanclub records.

"[5] Trouser Press wrote that the band's "straightforward guitar pop" was presented in a "flattering light", but that the album suffered from uneven songwriting.