Nicola Sturgeon highlighted the "tremendous contribution" of Catholic schools to Scotland's education system as she announced almost £100,000 extra cash to help boost their teacher numbers.
The Scottish Government will invest £127,000 in the Catholic teacher Education Programme this year - up from £28,000 last year.
The money will allow 322 student teachers to get a Catholic Teaching Certificate - which is a requirement for teaching in a Catholic school - 46 more than the previous year.
The additional cash will also mean the training will be available at Aberdeen University for the first time, as well as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde universities.
The First Minister announced the funding boost as she gave this year's Cardinal Winning lecture at the University of Glasgow.
Ms Sturgeon said: "2018 is the centenary of the legislation that brought Roman Catholic schools into Scotland's state education system. In that time, Catholic schools have made a tremendous contribution to Scottish education, and this is something we want to see continue.
"The Scottish Government is committed to ensure that all schools - both denominational and non-denominational - have the right number of teachers in place.
"I am therefore delighted that the increased investment I am announcing today will fund 322 training places - giving additional career choice for trainee teachers, and making it easier for Catholic schools to recruit."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel