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Tag Archives: Rock Kirwan

Kilrush school’s rise in third level attedance

KILRUSH Community School principal, Rock Kirwan, attributes the fact that 100% of last year’s Leaving Cert students went on to study at third level, to a collective ambition to get the best from each student. This figure is a huge increase from 2009, when 51% of students went on to study at third level. Almost 50 students sat the State exam in 2016, while the school currently has a student population of 460. “We just do our best with the students. We try to get the best out of them and, if something like this happens as a result, that’s a bonus. It reinforces our sense of what we’re doing as a school. “Education is changing constantly in difficult times. We’re well aware that an individual child has a personal best. If there’s something hindering them from achieving that personal best, we do what we can to resolve that. Children, whom we feel aren’t achieving their personal best, we will …

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Students’ flight from West Clare

UP to 80% of students educated at Kilrush Community School have no option but to leave West Clare, due to the absence of employment opportunities. That’s according to principal, Rock Kirwan, who is starting his 24th year at the 38-teacher school, which has a current enrolment of 430 pupils. “I would suspect that you are talking between 20% and 30%,” he replied, when asked how many of his past pupils live and work in the region. “That would be an interesting piece of research for some budding sociologist to take up in college, as to what is happening in rural areas. Most see that their futures lie elsewhere and not in the local area. Most are aware of that, particularly those that go on to third level, as most do. If you take what’s being called the recovery in the Irish economy, it’s being fed out of two or three major urban centres. I don’t see that that has filtered …

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