Christian Brothers hand on schools

MORE than two centuries of direct involvement by the Christian Brothers in Irish education has ended with the handing over of its 96 schools to a lay trust.

While yesterday’s hand-over to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST) has been planned for a number of years, it formally marks the end of active work by the order’s trustees.

The 59 second level and 39 primary schools have 35,000 students and their educational ethos is now the responsibility of the ERST, named after the order’s founder who set up his first school for boys in 1802.