School continues wait for building

NONE of the pupils who were at Star of the Sea National School when a new building was promised are still attending classes there.

They have gone on to second-level education already but staff and hundreds more children are still teaching and learning in the same building built in the 1970s for 140 boys in Passage West, Co Cork.

But more than 300 boys and girls now occupy its four classrooms and the five prefabs which have engulfed what was once a playground and playing field.

For principal Brendan McCormack, the frustration grows every week, particularly given that a site was bought for the Department of Education to build a 16-classroom school in 2005. The board of management was assured by the Department of Education in December 2006 that a design team would be appointed by last April, which should have left them a year off starting classes in the new school at this stage.

“It was 1999 when Micheál Martin, who was Education Minister at the time, first promised us a new building. The site took three years to buy from Cork County Council but we look like being forever waiting to go to design and construction,” said Mr McCormack.

The latest letter from Mr Martin — one of the town’s local TDs — claims that a design team will finally be appointed this month but pupils, parents and teachers say they have heard too many promises in the past.

They staged a protest at the school yesterday where future pupils were among those highlighting the urgent need for progress.

“We have a language support teacher working with non-national children in the staff room, a resource teacher uses the computer room and one of our classes has to use the assembly hall. This means we can’t properly teach computers, or drama or physical education which pupils should be using the hall for,” said Mr McCormack.

He said the growing population of the area has earned the school another teacher next year but there will be nowhere for the additional class unless a prefab promised by the Department of Education last year arrives.

During a visit to Cork yesterday, Ms Hanafin said the process of appointing a design team is at an advanced stage and is expected to be concluded shortly.

She was speaking after visiting two schools for children with autism, including the Cork ABA School, the largest applied behavioural analysis (ABA) centre in the country. Her department has been criticised for limiting funding to just 12 ABA schools but requiring other autistic children to attend units with a mix of ABA and other teaching methods.

Ms Hanafin also visited the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind training centre, where she met families and children who benefit from the assistance dogs for families of children with autism.