Connemara Principal’s plea – help us save our school

A Conamara primary principal has sent out an SOS – save our school!

Scoil Cholmáin in Muigh-Inis near Carna needs to recruit four more pupils before the start of term in September – or it will lose one of its two teachers.

So the school, along with the wider community, launched a recruitment drive on social media to attract people to enrol their children there.

Parents of children attending Scoil Cholmáin are highlighting the benefits of living near Carna in an effort to attract families to relocate to the area.

Teaching principal Róisín Ní Chualáin explained the difficulty that the school is facing.

“We’ve 18 pupils in the school at the moment. There are seven in sixth class, who are leaving,” she said.

“Another family unfortunately have to leave for personal reasons, and they have two children. Their heart is broken that they have to take the children out but that is life, and it’s not their fault and we support their decision.

“That made it jump from seven to nine children we’re losing this year and that brings our numbers down to nine in September.

“The Department (of Education) go by the year before. If we start September 2021 with nine pupils, then in September 2022 they look at that and say anything below 13 is a one-teacher school. So we’d need to have 13 on our roll book this September to keep a second teacher for next September.

“If you lose a teacher, it’s a whole other ball game and it’s extremely difficult to keep the school open. If you lose one teacher, you’d have to have 16 pupils to get that teacher back.”

Read the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie