Yet the city council voted against opening a Catholic secondary school in 2024 and 2025.
Now, the prospect is due for discussion at a meeting of the full SNP/Labour majority council in December. It will be the third time the council votes on the measure, despite the fact that Aberdeen city school rolls show that 11 primary and secondary schools are over-subscribed while a further 15 now operate at 90 per cent capacity.
“There are now more Catholics in Aberdeen than in Dundee, which has 10 Catholic primary and two Catholic secondary schools”, said John Murray, who is the Catholic Church representative on the Education and Children’s Services Committee of Aberdeen City Council.
He told The Tablet numbers of Catholics in the city on Scotland’s north-east coast had nearly doubled since 2001. Figures for the 2001 census showed that 11,919 Catholics lived in Aberdeen. By the 2022 census, that figure had increased to 19,239.
“There’s a large Polish community in Aberdeen. There’s a large number of Nigerians and also loads of Scots brought up in south-west Scotland where Catholic schools are what you have”, said Murray.
The idea for the secondary school was “parent-led,” he told The Tablet: “When Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen was making synodal visits to all the parishes and meeting the parishioners, a lot of people said to him why is there no Catholic secondary school?”
“The fundamental thing is that the vast majority of families in Scotland whether Catholics or non-Catholics, Muslims or non-believers can send their child into a Catholic Secondary School. Aberdeen County Council are denying this to Aberdeen families”, said Murray. “The law obliges the local authority to provide a Catholic school if it can be shown there’s a need for one.
He added: “Two years ago, the council surveyed the people of Aberdeen about the future of the city’s three Catholic primary schools. It also asked people if they would support a Catholic secondary school. Hundreds responded ‘yes’, but the council failed to ask the respondents how many children they had”.
Asked why the council has opposed the opening of a Catholic secondary school, Murray replied: “I don’t know. All we have been asking the council is that they agree to set up a working group with representatives of the council and from the Catholic Church to discuss the possibility”.
A private convent school for girls run by the Sisters of the Society of the Sacred Heart closed in 1964. A decade later, St Peter’s closed its secondary school to operate only as a Catholic primary school.