Mullingar Educate Together National School, Learning Together to live Together.

11th February 2005

Mullingar Educate Together National School first opened its doors in September 2004. After much hard work and commitment from parents, staff and Patron, the local Rugby Club very kindly provided accommodation rental accommodation and the school opened with 26 pupils. Currently Mullingar Educate Together National School is a thriving community endeavour, committed to developing its full potential, and filled with vision and ambition to reach the ultimate goal of a state owned permanent primary school building. The Board of Management of the Mullingar ETNS were both interested and delighted to learn from a recent response by the Minister for Education & Science Mary Hanafin,  that the school will, in due course, be developed into a 16 class primary school providing 480 pupils places.

At present the school has 26 pupils enrolled and is now taking names for all prospective pupils. The Board of Management are actively seeking a site for permanent accommodation.

One of the major difficulties for all new schools is sourcing suitable temporary accommodation to facilitate a developing school. This is particularly pertinent in a rapidly developing area such as Mullingar. Educate Together believes that there are serious weaknesses in the Department’s legal position in its insistence that parents must provide the temporary accommodation to open a school and the requirement that volunteer parents must provide such accommodation for “seven to ten years”. This has huge financial implications on the Board of Management and can create a sense of discrimination toward parents seeking multi-denominational education for their children.

The Educate Together sector is made up of 35 national schools spread across the entire country. Fundamental to the ethos of Educate Together schools is the belief that by providing a supportive atmosphere for children of different faiths and cultural identities in schools, we can make a major contribution to the social and ethical future of our society. The central characteristics of this sector are that all schools must be set up by local parental voluntary initiative and that they operate with a patronage charter that obliges them to provide equality of access and esteem to children irrespective of their social, cultural and religious background.  As a result, the sector has pioneered best practice in the partnership approach to school management and has built a powerful body of experience in operating schools that provide a supportive atmosphere to many faiths and cultures. In addition to offering an ethical education programme, Boards of Management of Educate Together schools help any group of parents who wish to use the facilities of the school outside school hours to organise specific doctrinal instruction classes. In most Educate Together schools, Roman Catholic sacramental preparation is available in these out-of-hours programmes; these are organised by Catholic parents often with the direct participation of the local parish. These classes mix naturally with other extra-curricular activities of the school. Parents of other faiths are similarly facilitated.

Over the past three years, Educate Together has made more applications for new schools than any other sector. This growth in demand is stimulated by the high reputation of the existing schools and the rapid diversification of Irish society where many families are seeking multi-denominational education.
For further information please contact our National Office at info@educatetogether.ie or (01) 4292500/ 0876210379