Featured School
St. Ultan's NS
Cherry Orchard, Dublin
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The NPPTI - Primary Strand website will regularly feature a school from the project, focusing on their experience of the project. Our current featured School is St. Ultan's N.S., Cherry Orchard, Dublin. If you would like your school to be featured on this website, please contact Suzanne Stone at suzanne.stone@spd.dcu.ie or Tel: 01 884 2257.
Aoife Slacke , mentor at St. Ultan's, introduces us to the school.
St
Ultan’s N.S. - The History
The community of Cherry Orchard waited many years for a
primary school to be built. Thanks to the vision and hard
work of many people at both local and national levels –
this dream has finally become a reality. St. Ultan’s
N.S. opened its doors for the first time on 1st September
2006 with 55 children (two Junior Infant classes and one
Senior Infant class). The school opened with a staff of
three teachers – Anne Keating, Mark Glynn and myself
Aoife Slacke, and our principal Ena Morley. Mark and I were
both undertaking our diplomas while Anne and Ena acted as
our mentors.
St.Ultan’s N.S. is a vertical, co-educational, Catholic
School catering for children from Junior Infants to Sixth
Class. As a developing school, each year we continue to
take in two Junior Infant classes. By September 2012 the
school will have all class levels from Infants to Sixth.
In September 2008 we took in three Junior Infant Classes
and nine NQTs. This was a huge undertaking as six of these
NQTs are currently completing their diplomas, one is completing
her final year in Trinity and another is undertaking her
SCG.
The
St. Ultan's Project
St.Ultan’s NS is part of ‘St. Ultan’s
Project’, which is an innovative, integrated Education
and Care Project for Cherry Orchard. There is no other project
like this in the whole of Ireland and so it is a very exciting
place to work for teachers but it does require a huge level
of commitment from all staff for integration to be successful.
The four elements of the project are:
· Nursery and Early Childhood Education Unit
· Primary School
· Care Facility (before, during and after school)
for children up to 18yrs
· Canteen and Catering Facility
More from St. Ultan's below.