School living it up after helping bridge ethnic divide

DUBLIN’S O’Connell School was honoured by Lord Mayor Royston Brady yesterday for its effort to forge ties with children from many countries who live here.

The north city school, which ran a multicultural summer school for six weeks this year, took the top post-primary prize in the education category of the 2003 Guinness Living Dublin Awards.

“We set up the summer school four years ago to cater for a lot of foreign students who were in the school,” said Michael Kilbride, who began the project and runs the post-primary section at O’Connell’s. “Up to last year between 25% and 28% of our students would be foreign nationals and we have about 30 different nationalities.”