From two tiny rooms in the local scouts den to a brand new purpose built 16 classroom school in two years. That’s what the Board of Management and the parents of Griffeen Valley ET school will be celebrating when their new building opens this week right on schedule.
Lucan’s second Educate Together School will accommodate more than 213 pupils from Junior Infants to Third Class. The school’s principal, Tomas O’Dulaing, will manage the school with a staff of 14 teachers, 4 Special Needs Assistants, together with the Admin, Cleaning and Maintenance staff.
Speaking today about their achievement a spokesperson for the Board of Management said “The existence of this second ET school will go a long way towards addressing the rapidly increasing demand for primary school places in Lucan. It will also help to deal with the requirements of a growing number of parents for multi â denominational education for their children. The Board and the Parents are delighted with this progress and in particular we want to thank the Minister and his officials in the Dept of Education and Science for their co-operation and hard work throughout the past two years in making this a reality. We look forward to their continued co operation with the establishment of an Educate Together Second Level School which will be required in Lucan in the very near future.”
“We are also grateful to the builders, Western Building Systems, who have delivered this lovely structure on time, for their professionalism and efficiency. Those who deserve the most praise are of course the parents whose optimism, determination, and hard work have made what two years ago seemed a distant dream to be now a living reality. The support and sufferance of the school staff, the support and assistance of our patron Educate Together, and the generosity of the existing Lucan Educate Together school was also very much appreciated.”
Educate Together is the national organization for multi-denominational education in Ireland. Over the past four years, the size of the sector has doubled and is continuing to grow as the fastest developing sector in Irish education. This September, four new Educate Together schools are opening – in Tullamore, Mullingar, Limerick and Dublin 15. This will bring the number of such schools to total of 35. Of these schools, 22 remain in temporary accommodation. The Griffeen Valley school is a unique design, timber framed and taking only six months to construct. It represents a radical response from the Department of Education to emerging educational needs in developing areas.
