Primary school celebrates 125th birthday

PUPILS celebrating 125 years of education in a Cork parish include five great-great-grandchildren of one of the first teachers at the school.

Rusheen National School, about eight kilometres from Macroom, opened its doors in April 1885 with pupils taught by Eliza O’Riordan and principal John Ambrose.

The current principal Gerard Coakley, a past-pupil, has been dusting down the old school registers and enthralling the 91 children with the records of yesteryear.

“It’s great to see their faces as they find their parents, uncles and grandparents,” said Mr Coakley.

Among those enrolled are five of Eliza O’Riordan’s great-great-grandchildren, Michelle O’Callaghan and Peadar, Aoife, Gráinne and Danielle Twomey. A great-grand-daughter of John Ambrose, Claire Ambrose is a regular substitute at the school, where the latest extension to facilities will be opened by Enterprise Minister Batt O’Keeffe tomorrow.

The school was still a two-classroom facility with outside toilets when Mr Coakley took charge in 1992 but it now boasts four classrooms, a learning support from, resource teaching room, staff room and office. Part of the additional buildings have been in use since last year, thanks to a Department of Education grant of almost €200,000.

Instead of using the money for temporary accommodation such as prefabs, the school board and parents used additional fundraising to provide a classroom, the learning support and resource rooms, and also to improve access and parking.

But not only will Mr O’Keeffe be overseeing the fruits of the school’s work, he will also get a chance to see for himself where his mother-in-law was taught.

“Abina McSweeney, mother of the minister’s wife Mary, enrolled as a pupil here in 1920, so we have a lot more links than him just being our local minister,” said Mr Coakley.

Among those invited to the celebration are classmates of Ms McSweeney, John O’Callaghan and Sheila Delaney who also started at Rusheen in 1920, and are the oldest living past pupils.

But while the school has survived since 1885, teaching and learning has been going on in the mid-Cork parish of Aghinagh for even longer.

“Education in the Rusheen area extends back even further than this, with at least two earlier schools being located in the vicinity,” the principal explained.

For now, the families of the school looking forward to future generations enjoying the new facilities.