The Scottish government is continuing its support of the Holocaust Educational Trust's Lessons from Auschwitz programme for schools with a £214,000 grant.

Making the announcement on Wednesday, Scottish Skills and Lifelong Learning Minister Angela Constance said the funding would enable more than 350 pupils to travel to Auschwitz on two flights in the 2011/12 year. Many more people in schools and communities would benefit from the sharing of participants' experiences.

"Lessons from Auschwitz is a deep, personal and in some cases, life-changing experience," she said. "I hope that many more young people will be able to take part in the coming years."

Ms Constance was speaking in advance of joining HET representatives at Edinburgh's city chambers to pay tribute to student ambassadors from the project - a four-part course centred around an Auschwitz visit.

Among the student ambassadors was Callum Stewart, who said: "It is more important than ever that our generation learn about the true horrors of the Holocaust as we have no first-hand experience of true horror. I am determined to continue my work as an ambassador to ensure the Holocaust is an understood part of history."

HET chief executive Karen Pollock said the young ambassadors "should be proud of what they have achieved and we are confident that they will continue to educate members of their local community so that racism and hatred do not go unchecked".

The event also featured an extract from a play, A Promised Land, about Jane Haining, a Scot who died in Auschwitz in 1944 with Hungarian Jewish children she had been caring for.