Click on the link
of your choice in the table below for
various aspects
of education in Ireland / Newbawn
Education
Today
The Irish school year for primary school children
stretches from 1st September to 30th June
approximately and schools must be open for 183 days in this
period. The school day lasts for five hours forty minutes.
In SHNS Newbawn the school day starts at 9.20am and ends at
3pm.
Children start school from around the age of four or five years
and leave when they are twelve or thirteen years of age. The primary
school cycle is eight years long. Legally a child has to be at
least four and under six years of age to start in an Irish
Primary School.
Texts books, curriculum guidelines, teacher training
are all geared towards single class groupings. However this
does not reflect the day to day
Schools generally have two years of infant classes, followed
by classes from 1st to 6th.
State primary schools used to be known as "national schools"
a fact that remains in official school names (Sacred Heart
National School) and they are still called this by many
people.
Curriculum - The curriculum covers - English, Irish *,
Mathematics, Social, Environmental and Scientific Education,
Arts, (including Visual Arts, Music and Drama) Physical
Education, Social, Personal and Health Education .
There are formal standardised tests carried out in 2nd, 4th
and 6th classes.
Books are not supplied by the school with text books or books
for writing (known as copies), either purchased from a
shop or "rented" from the school.
To apply to a school for enrolment you apply directly to the
school of your choice. Ask for their admissions policy and
check whether you need to register your child's name on a
waiting list.
The present school was opened in 1972 and consisted of
four classrooms. On foot of a Health and Saftey audit and to
tackle the over-crowding problems the school was then
facing, the BOM sought funding for two extra classrooms, a
store room, a staff room, offices for both the principal and
secretary and a school hall. Despite high hopes the
application was turned down and the school was granted
funding for two classrooms only. Undeterred the BOM decided
to fund raise locally and an ambitious building project
began in June 2006. Local builders, Wm. Doyle and Son,
completed this very ambitious project by June of the
following year. In November 2007, Bishop Denis Brennan of
Ferns, officially opened two new classrooms, a staff-room,
two Learning Support Rooms, a Secretary's Office, a
Principal's Office and a 260m² Sports Hall. The total cost
of this build was €565,000 of which €180,000 was raised
locally. It is the contention of all connected with the
project that this represented the best value for any school
built under the Devolved Initiative Scheme any where in
Ireland. A contention borne out by the facts that two
smaller extensions carried out in Co. Wexford cost the DES
over €1.4m each.
Schools in the past -
Pre-Christian Times
Children in the past did not always go to school to learn.
Early farmers learned how to plough and to tame animals
instead. Long ago in Ireland from about 600 B.C. people who
have been called 'the Celts' had the custom of sending their
child to another family to be reared and taught certain
things. This was called fosterage. Children would be taught
practical things. A boy might learn how to herd cattle, how
to horse-ride, play sports or use weapons. A girl who was
fostered might learn about cooking and looking after animals
or how to sew and make clothes.
Bardic Schools
As there were no books then, children did not study
reading or writing. Different groups of people went to
Bardic schools. The judges (breitheamh) went to study Irish
Law, also known as Brehon Law. Bards, who were poets or filí,
had to learn off long and complicated traditional Irish
stories and poems over seven years. Then they travelled around
Ireland and entertained the noble families by reciting and
composing songs and stories.
To go to these schools you needed a very good memory as you
could not write things down. You could also study to be a
druid. Druids were pagan priests knew a lot about cures.
They were also said to be able to perform magic and to
predict things in the future.
Monastic Schools
Monasteries had some of the first schools in Ireland. They
were places where people came to study how to read and
write. They would not have been very comfortable.
A famous monastic school was in a monastery in Armagh
which was founded about the time of St. Patrick in the 5th
Century. It was famous because of the Book of Armagh, a
precious and beautifully bound manuscript that was written
there over a period of time from about 808A.D
We can examine evidence of what scholars learned in monastic
schools by examining this book which is now preserved in the
Library of Trinity College, Dublin. It is written on vellum
which is calf skin. The writing, or penmanship, in the Book
of Armagh is beautiful and in colour.
In monastic schools writers called scribes learned to
write, understand and draw the message of the Bible, usually
in Latin. The Book of Armagh also shows us evidence of
writing in the Irish language from long long ago. This is
very rare and precious. The Book of Armagh has the Gospels
according to Matthew, Mark, John and Luke as well as the
story of the life of St. Patrick and other documents copied
into it by the monks.
Larger Monasteries
Larger monasteries in Ireland like Clonmacnoise had special
places where young monks could study the scriptures in an
area known as the scriptorium.
Monks would copy the psalms and the gospels often using
beautiful illuminations and decorations. There were no
printed books then so everything was had written. Most
writing was done with a quill made from a feather or from a
reed.
The Book of Kells
The Book of Kells was produced around A.D. 800. We can tell
what the mons studied by examining this book and ancient
manuscripts. Not all manuscripts were written on vellum.
Some were written on parchment which was the skin of sheep
or goats. Parchment was useful as it could be stitched
together to make a book. The book is called after the
monastic school in Kells where most of it was written. The
Book of Kells is beautifully illustrated and contains the
gospels of the Bible in Latin. Those who attended monastic
schools learned to read and write languages like Latin and
Irish. They would also have learned to illustrate scenes
from the Bible and would have had to know how to make ink in
different colours.
Attacks on monastic schools
From about 795 A.D. many monasteries were attacked by the
Vikings. Chalices as well as decorated and valuable
manuscript covers were stolen. Many monks were killed or
taken prisoner. If you had been a young scribe then you
might have been captured too or worse you might have been
killed!
Reading Pictures of Stone
As well as learning to illustrate the scriptures on vellum
and parchment some students in the time of Christian Ireland
learned to draw on stone. Would you have liked to learn to
use a chisel to cut pictures in stone? Many beautiful
drawings of stone were made on high crosses from about the
7th Century. They told the stories of the Bible in pictures
so that people who could not read would understand.
The Normans
The coming of the Anglo-Normans to Ireland in the
1170s has become know as the Norman Invasion. The Normans
had originally come to England and Wales from Normandy in
France. A new monastic order, the Cistercians from France,
had been invited to Ireland in 1142 even before the Normans
arrived, and founded the Cistercian Mellifont Abbey in
County Louth.
Some Cistercian monks were sent from France to train Irish
monks. They spoke French so if you were learning to be a
Cistercian at that time you would have heard a mixture of
French, Irish and Latin.
Many of the newly arrived Norman knights also spoke French
while others spoke English. The Normans were Christian and
so they built even more abbeys and monasteries. Monastic
schools continued. French and English would have thrived in
schools in Ireland too.
Over time, however, the Normans did not behave like a
foreign conquering army. They learned to speak Irish. They
could also write and read Irish and many adopted the Irish
custom of fosterage as well as Irish clothing customs. They
also sent their children to schools for poets and lawyers.
They then became patrons of Irish bards and poets. If you
were a newly trained bard at that time you might have played
your harp in front of an Anglo-Norman lord. The Statutes of
Kilkenny of 1366 forbade the use of Irish language or
customs by the Anglo-Normans but these laws did not make
much difference.
Penal Laws
In the 17th Century new laws were passed in Ireland.
They were known as the ‘penal laws’. They came into force
during the reign of King William of Orange. King William had
been victorious over the Catholic King James The 11th at the
Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The Penal Laws of 1695 made strict laws against
Catholics because the ruler’s of Ireland at the time were
afraid that they would become too powerful and rebel. Below
are some examples of Penal Laws:
No Catholic could become a teacher:
To overcome this law, come Catholic school master’s worked
as under-masters in Protestant schools. A new law was
brought out forbidding this in 1709.
It was illegal to send Catholic children to school:
It was hoped that by having no Catholic schoolmasters there
would be no Catholic schools set up and that Catholics would
send their children to Protestant schools which the
government preferred. It was hoped that children attending
these schools would learn to be loyal to the crown of
England, would learn the English language and would adopt
the Protestant faith.
The penal laws were repealed in 1782 but many parents
continued to send their children to hedge schools up until
about the 1840’s. After the end of the penal laws these
schools did not have to be such temporary dwellings in
hedges.
Hedge Schools
In the year 2000 a big search got underway
to find the Hedge School that the late James Luke Doyle
talked about all his life. When it was found archaeologists
came to see it. The School had only three sides and two rooms.
It was called the Hedge School because the east side of the
school was just a hedge.
The school was three metres high with the
first metre built from stone and the remainder, up to roof
level, constructed of turf. The roof was made with slates
more than an inch in thickness. From one corner of the
school was a trail lined with stones which led up to the
rock, giving a means of escape.
Secret schools known as hedge schools were set up for
Catholic children. These were called ‘scoileanna scairte’ in
Irish. From about 1695, there were strict laws in Irelands
which forbid Catholic from setting up schools or from
sending their children abroad to school.
Most of the teachers in hedge schools were men although
there were women. However, the education in hedge schools
varied from school to school. Most hedge schools taught
reading, writing and arithmetic. Many schools taught Greek
and Latin.
In hedge schools, different age groups attended the same
master. Some children were very young while others might be
eighteen or nineteen years old. To overcome the difficulties
of this, younger children were allowed to play with things
like pebbles and straw while the master worked with the
older children. Young children also learned the alphabet as
well as reading and spellings. Children who did well at
spellings were rewarded with such things as brass pins that
they could display on their coats going home.
National Schools in the 19th Century
In 1831 primary education came to Ireland. This meant that
children no longer had to attend fee paying schools or
charity schools. Instead they could attend a local primary
school. A National Board of Education was set up and a
national system of primary schools began in Ireland. The
government gave a grant which paid for almost all of the
building costs of new national schools as well as the
salaries of the teachers. Any area that wanted a school had
to apply for a grant to build it.
The old school in Newbawn was built in 1860 and was
used as a school up to 1909. The building, which is at the
back of the Church, is still used as a hall for the parish.
Schools in the nineteenth century were usually
single-storey buildings. This school looks similar to a
house , and has wooden sash windows, which are both typical
features of 19th century Irish schools. Some had very
decorative window-sills which were sometimes made of marble.
The schools then were usually quite plain inside and often
had Georgian-style windows. Some buildings used local stone
to build them. Many schools had decorated roofs and had a
type of plaster or cement on the outside walls.
In 1909 the old school was replaced by the new school, a
stout two-room school that was attended by generations of
Newbawn children from that time up to 1972.
