Archive News
Junior Certs out in force to celebrate results
Date Published: 10-Sep-2009
Fewer students sat the Junior Certificate this year, with less than 3,000 secondary school pupils across the city and county celebrating their results yesterday (Wednesday).
A total of 2,937 sat the exam in Galway in June, which was down by six per cent on last year. The number of students with special needs and adults who had returned to state education remained the same.
Just nine students nationwide achieved the highest possible mark of 12 As in the exam. Nationally, more than 55,000 school students received their results, which were available online from 4pm. This year’s results are in line with those of previous years. More than 20,000 students achieved an A in at least one subject.
Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keefe, congratulated all the students on completing the first major set of examinations in their second level education, and expressed delight at the number who took science and higher level maths exams. Over 87% of students sat the science subject and over 70% of those students took it at higher level. Of the overall numbers who sat maths, over 43% of them took higher level.
He urged them to continue with these subjects onto the Leaving Cert.
Joe Moran, president of ASTI, the largest second level teachers union, said regardless of individual grades, the junior cert was an important milestone for all students. “Every student has a unique set of talents, abilities, skills and interests and it is this uniqueness that we should celebrate today,” he said.
He went on to express concern about the impact of the education cutbacks on Junior Cycle education: “The increase in the pupil: teacher ratio means larger classes for every student, the abolition of the Junior Certificate Schools Programme grant will affect marginalised and disadvantaged Junior Cycle students and will mean some students will be at increased risk of dropping out, and the cap on language support teachers will negatively affect newcomer students at a crucial time in their education.”
A number of alcohol-free parties were planned for various locations around the city and county to encourage students to celebrate without indulging in alcohol.
A number of agencies joined together to provide a drug and alcohol free venue for city students to celebrate the results. Each of the students received a free invitation to the party at Leisureland on Wednesday, that was supervised by over 50 experienced volunteers, drawn from the agencies involved, including the HSE, Foróige, Galway City Partnership, Galway City VEC, An Garda Síochána, Galway City Council, Youth Work Ireland and the schools. Students who wished to attend had to complete an application form, which included a passport photograph and contact details for their parents. The forms were returned to the school and the young people had to register their attendance on the night.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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