Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow has urged all Catholic teachers to seek jobs in the Catholic education sector amid a crisis in recruitment. Archbishop Tartaglia, president of the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES), said: “Given the current shortages of teachers and headteachers, I want to appeal to Catholic teachers who are not currently working in Catholic schools. My request is this: please seek an appointment in a Catholic school. “We are working hard with the University of Glasgow and others to improve the supply of teachers. I must stress that this is a critical issue that may have significant consequences if we cannot produce more teachers soon.” The archbishop added: “The threat is not so much external as internal. Put simply, we need more Catholic teachers. The problem is becoming acute everywhere, not just in rural areas. Schools are struggling to fill vacancies with Catholic teachers and ‘supply’ teachers very thin on the ground everywhere.” Teacher shortages are also an issue across the education sector in Scotland, with rural areas and subjects such as science, technology and maths the most affected. Archbishop Tartaglia said Scotland’s bishops had appealed to Scottish Government ministers to ensure that sufficient teachers were being educated to work in Catholic schools. The St Andrew’s Foundation for Catholic teacher education at Glasgow University has also begun a series of talks aimed at school pupils in an bid to increase teacher numbers. Michael McGrath, director of SCES, said councils had been contacted to make it easier for Catholic teachers to transfer to Catholic schools within council areas when vacancies arise. He told the Scottish Catholic Observer: “There is a general shortage of teachers across the country, but very particularly councils are finding it hard to recruit teachers for Catholic schools who have got a qualification for religious education and are available to do those jobs. It’s like having Gaelic medium schools with teachers who don’t speak Gaelic. How can you deliver the Catholic education that you are expected to, that parents want you to, if you don’t have people who understand that and are committed to it and are able to deliver it?” Mr McGrath cited low salaries and a boom in retiring teachers who came into the profession in the 1970s as two factors exacerbating the shortage. But Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association, called for a review of the “unfair” system of Catholic approval for staff. He said: “The system is unfair because it is down to the discretion of schools and so that can make recruitment difficult. “The same rules should apply across the sector, but we are concerned that teachers don't always know what is expected of them in a Catholic school. “The interpretation of what constitutes a Catholic ethos can vary from school to school.” In 2014 Anthony Finn, the former head of the General Teaching Council for Scotland, the teaching watchdog, said Catholic headteachers believed the approval policy was being implemented inconsistently.