Sacred Heart National School (SHNS)  is a co-educational, Catholic, primary school which strives to provide a well-ordered, caring, happy and secure atmosphere where the intellectual, spiritual, physical, moral and cultural needs of the pupils are identified and addressed.

While SHNS is a school with a Catholic ethos, it also has due recognition for all other religions, however due to constraints of time, space and personnel children of other faiths may have to remain in class during Religion classes.

For the school year 2011/2012 there are 130 pupils in the school.

This year (2011-2012) the classes are divided into Junior Infants, Senior Infants, 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th and 5th & 6th together.

School Staff (01/09/2011)

 Principal: Anne Marie O'Neill; Assistant Principal: Geraldine Davey;

Assistant Teachers: Mary Murphy, Joan Murphy, Lisa Crowe, Rosalind McGovern & Mairéad Furlong.

S.N.A.: Anne French

Secretary: Susan White  Cleaner: Nellie Breen

Built in 1972 the school has served the parish of Newbawn well. In June 2006 an extension, only part funded by DES, was begun and a 260m² gymnasium built along with two new classrooms. Internal renovation saw the completion of two small offices, 2 learning Support Rooms and a staffroom.

This project would not have been possible without the work of many different BOMs, Parents' Association and parishioners of Newbawn who worked for years to raise funds for the school. From a total build cost of € 565,000 just over € 180,000 (30%+) was raised locally. This is one of the biggest local contributions ever made in the history of the state to a local school and is testament to the esteem in which the school is held by the local community. The entire project was also hugely helped by an anonymous benefactor who paid the fees for the engineers and architects who worked on the project. Two years after the extension was completed, this same person supplied a storage container for the school.

The two new classrooms were fitted out with state of the art furniture and during the extension programme DES funding was provide to replace the original 1972 furniture in two of the other four classes.

In 2008, free to air television was installed in all six classrooms allowing all children access to many of the excellent programmes / series available today.

Infrastructural improvements are ongoing at the school and in the summer of 2009 the "old" building had attic and wall insulation completed, and costing just under € 5,000, through the DES "Energy in Schools Initiative." The BOM had tinted double glazed windows fitted at the same time throughout the old school costing € 27,500. Tinted windows were chosen to minimise the glare in the four (out of six classrooms) where e-beam / interactive whiteboards have been installed.

The culmination of this work saw the school awarded a BER of B2 in October 2009, the same month the BOM applied to DES for funding to replace the last of the 1970s furniture still used in school by pupils and teachers.