New chapter opens in school’s proud history

GENERATIONS of education in a mid-Cork school have been celebrated as pupils and staff enjoy teaching and learning in an extension to the original building.

Ballyvongane National School, about 6km from the village of Coachford, is typical of hundreds of small rural schools in the country where children travel from a few miles.

But the two-teacher facility dates back to the Great Famine in 1845, when local farmer Timothy McCarthy donated a site for a school.