The leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics says abolishing tuition fees must be the top priority for the new Scottish Parliament.

Cardinal Thomas Winning has expressed strong opposition to the policy of making university students contribute towards their tuition fees before, but it is the first time he has called on the Scottish Parliament to make the repeal its main priority.

Cardinal Winning described the abolition of grants as a backward step.

Cardinal Thomas Winning wants reassurances that the poor will not have to pay

"Here in the west of Scotland there are many poor people," he said. "There are many very intelligent young men and women and I would regret very much if even one of them was dissuaded from going on to higher education simply because they could not find the £1,000 tuition fee."

The Government is insisting that students from the poorest backgrounds will not have to pay anything towards fees, but Cardinal Winning wants more reassurance.

The Education Minister, Brian Wilson, said he would be surprised if the new Scottish parliament did consider fees a priority.

Meanwhile, the Educational Institute of Scotland teaching union has deplored figures that eight times as many children go to university from affluent areas than from deprived ones.

Ronnie Smith: Children from families on low incomes are suffering

The General Secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, Ronnie Smith, said the figure was unacceptable.

"What we want to do is see whether there are obstacles arising from poverty that could be removed and which would gain access to higher education," said Mr Smith.

Mr Smith believed there were other obstacles that could affect the progress of children.

He said: "I think it happens every day at very simple levels in terms of their experience at school, for example a pound for a bus fare can be a big chunk out of an income of a family living in poverty so there are whole range of things like that which could impede the progress of children at school and then on into higher education."

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