Facilitator starts work on local multi-denominational school proposal

A facilitator has been appointed to the Athlone area to work with school patrons and school authorities to pave the way for the development of the town's first multi-denominational primary school.

The move comes in the wake of an announcement in March by the Minister for Education Norma Foley that Athlone was among a number of areas being included in a new pilot project.

The project involves a number of towns and parts of cities that have no multi-denominational primary schools and aims to identify potential schools and to engage with school authorities, staff and the school communities in order to agree a transfer of patronage and change of ethos, where there is sufficient demand.

In a written answer in the Dail, Minister Foley recently told Sinn Fein TD Eoin Ó Broin that while the facilitators have commenced their work and are working with the patron representatives in each area, the process is at an early stage.

The independent facilitators are being engaged to work with school patron and school authorities at a local level to assist in identifying potential school or schools for the transfer of patronage, to engage with stakeholders including school authorities, school staff and the school community.

It's the third time in the last ten years that Athlone has been included in such a list. In 2012, Athlone was named in the final report of the Advisory Group to the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector among 47 towns in which some primary schools could lose their Catholic patronage.

However, when the Department of Education proceeded to implement the report, it omitted Athlone on the basis that the advisory group report used the criteria of areas where the population had to be less than 20,000.

Athlone met this criterion using the 2006 Census data but when the same criterion was applied to the Census 2011 data, the population of Athlone had, by then, exceeded 20,000.

In 2018, Athlone was named among towns where the 'reconfiguration’ of a local primary school was being proposed but little happened subsequently.

In the intervening years, Educate Together has made some initial attempts to gauge support for the development of a school in Athlone.

In 2019, Lecarrow Community National School opened in the South Roscommon village when St John's NS was divested of its Catholic patronage and changed over to the multi-denominational 'community national school' model under the patronage of the Galway and Roscommon Education and Training Board.