The Diocese of Steubenville is celebrating National Catholic Schools Week, a tradition that has been in place since 1974. 

The annual celebration of Catholic education in the U.S. focuses on the responsibility of the parent to ensure that their child is well educated, and the important role that Catholic schools play in that responsibility. 

“As we begin Catholic Schools Week, please keep our students, faculty and staff at all our Catholic schools in your prayers!” the Diocese of Steubenville shared on Facebook. 

Catholic Schools Week will take place from Jan. 30-Feb. 5 with a theme of, “Catholic Schools: Faith. Excellence. Service.”

“Schools typically observe the annual celebration week with Masses, open houses and other activities for students, families, parishioners and community members," according to the National Catholic Educational Association. "Through these events, schools focus on the value Catholic education provides to young people and its contributions to our church, our communities and our nation.”

About 1.3 million students attend Catholic elementary schools, and about 500,000 attend Catholic high schools, according to the National Catholic Register.

“Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children," according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. "They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones. Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them.”

The Diocese of Steubenville has nine Catholic grade schools and two Catholic high schools.