The 2023/2024 school year will forever be remembered as a truly momentous one in the history of education in North Clare.
Last September, after a combined total of some 360 years of education, staff and students from the Ennistymon CBS, Scoil Mhuire Ennistymon and the Ennistymon Vocational School finally came together to form the long awaited Ennistymon Community School.
This new school, decades in the making, now boasts some 700 students, state of the art classrooms, a fully-sized PE Hall and an amphitheater, and with more than 90 teachers and staff it is also one of the single biggest employers in North Clare.
While it took until Easter to get all staff and students together in the same building, the spirit of the Ennistymon Community School has been building for years.
“It is a bit surreal to have us all under the same roof. It is incredible, after so many years, that now we have outstanding facilities and the newest of everything. Because of our size we are also now able to expand our subject range and offer a huge amount of subjects all the way through to senior cycle,” said Orla Conway, principal of the Ennistymon Community School.
“The facilities have helped so much. The wellbeing of the students has increased because we now have so much space outside and so much spaced inside. I think it is a huge benefit to the town that every child is being educated at one school. That is so positive.
“We finally have a building that matches our passion for education in the town and our students have every possible opportunity now.”
One of the key aims for Orla over the past number of years was insuring that the students and staff from the three schools came together as seamlessly as possible.
“A really big thing for me was bringing the values, the strengths and the ethos of each of the schools forward. I was so conscious of that over the past few years,” said Orla.
“Last year I was principal of no school, but I was principal of the new school. My job was to work with the three principals, the threes staffs and the community to bring the whole things together.
“One thing that I do notice was that the care of the student across the three schools was exceptional. We live in an era where wellbeing is paramount so that was a priority for us. I speak to the students all the time and the one thing that they always say is that it feels like we were nearly always here. The transition has been so seamless.
“At the start there was issues with the building, there were odd problems now and again that you have with a new building, but we have been a working, functioning school from the first day that we moved into this building.
“I think a lot of that is down to the planning that was done last summer for the move into the new school.
“I was the principal of the Vocational School three years ago. At that time I worked with Mary Lyons [then principal of CBS Ennistymon] and Seosaimhin Dhomhnallain [then principal of Scoil Mhuire] to bring groups of students together for tri-school events.
“Every few months we were able to bring students from the same age groups together to have team-building, group activities together to build-up collegiality. It was three years in the making to get us hear, but it was so seamless. It has gone way better that I ever could have imagined and I think a lot of that is down to the work of the staff, who have helped bring the students together.
“We had student and staff committees last year were decisions were made like picking the uniform. The sports teams also joined together and they have done incredibly well this year.”
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, investigative reporter and blogger who has been working in the media in Ireland for the past 20 years. His areas of special interest include the environment, mental health and politics.