Field study: Pupils take protest outside to highlight 10-year wait for school

IT IS their field of dreams... but they’ve been waiting about 10 years for it to become a reality.

Children who are taught in a school which has been branded a fire-trap had lessons in the great outdoors yesterday to highlight their plight.

And their parents warned politicians they’ll be waiting for them in the long grass at next year’s local elections.

The fourth class pupils of Star of the Sea national school in Passage West, Co Cork, set up tables and desks on the site of their proposed school, which was first promised almost a decade ago.

Teacher, Ray Dowling, then proceeded to teach pupils who started primary school in 2002, three years after a new school was formally sanctioned by then education minister Micheál Martin.

They expected to start their primary education in a new school. They will finish primary school in 2010.

They are unlikely to see the new building on the site at Maulbaun in Passage West before they leave school.

They will have spent their entire primary education attending classes in a cramped school building which has been branded a fire trap by fire officers.

Fiona O’Reilly, the spokesperson for the parents association, said yesterday’s event is just the latest in the school’s long running campaign designed to pressure the Government into fast-tracking the new building.

“There is no more room — even for prefabs at the school site,” she said.

“The children are no longer allowed to run in the yard due to shortage of space.

“The planning application is up soon for the new prefabs and then we will have lost the remaining green space at Star of the Sea.”

The school wrote to the new Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe last week congratulating him on his appointment and asked him to support their efforts to secure the new school.

The next campaign event planned by the school is a march by parents and pupils of Star of the Sea through the centre of Cork on May 23.

They will be joined by supporters of Glenville NS, in north Cork, where pupils are being taught in a converted toilet.

The protest will begin at Daunt Square, along the Grand Parade and past Department of Education offices on the South Mall.

Then on May 27, Star of the Sea’s principal and the chairperson of its board of management are due to meet the Department of Education’s building design team in Tullamore.

“They will be pushing for a completion date, as we are aware that the construction of the school could be completed within 20 months,” said Ms O’Reilly.

“We will continue with our campaign until we have a date for completion and we know that the finance for the project has been secured.”