Mayo school breaking new ground with new Leaving Cert subject

Sancta Maria College in Louisburgh is nothing if not a progressive institution.

It’s hard to imagine another school where a maths and science teacher would be let teach a subject totally unrelated to maths or science - never mind a completely new subject.

But that’s exactly what will happen when Sancta Maria becomes the first and only school in Mayo to offer Drama, Theatre and Film Studies as a Leaving Certificate subject.

The blurb on www.curriculumonline.ie promises a subject that will offer ‘opportunities for divergent and even radical thinking’ and to ‘challenge conventions and orthodoxies’.

That’s not something you typically associate with the Irish education system.

So The Mayo News decided that a spin to south Clew Bay was in order to find out more about this ground-breaking new subject.

Conceived last year with Climate Action and Sustainable Development, Sancta Maria is one of 57 schools offering Drama, Theatre and Film Studies to Fifth Year for the 2025/2026 academic year.

It’s not like they’re stuck for aspiring actors and singers either. The school of 500-plus students has a proud history of music drama, which they showcased to great acclaim in their latest school musical ‘Bye Bye Birdie’.

Dr Áine Moran, Principal of Sancta Maria College, says the school has endeavoured to expand their curriculum since before she took the reigns in 2021.

In last three years, the west Mayo school has introduced religion, society and politics, economics, computer science, applied mathematics and PE as exam subjects. It’s a far cry from what was on offer when she chose her Leaving Cert subjects 40 years previously.

“I did a science subject, I did a business subject, I did a language, I did something I enjoyed,” the Breaffy native tells The Mayo News during an interview in her office. “I think that’s really sad. Because why didn’t I do something I enjoyed, something I enjoyed, something I enjoyed and something I enjoyed? Because that’s what makes happy students.”

New experience

Great. But where does one get the qualified teachers for a subject that, to date, hasn’t been taught at senior cycle?

Enter Catherine Conway, a Ballinrobe native with a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies and English, and Chris Holloway, the maths and science teacher mentioned in the second line of this article.

Catherine, an experienced performer with Ballinrobe Musical Society, expressed an interest in teaching the subject when the school took their first steps to introducing it.

That was one box ticked: having a qualified teacher.

Chris Holloway, who joined the Sancta Maria staff alongside Catherine in 2018 and will teach the new subject alongside her, has a thicker backstory.

He hails from Wales, where he was part of a three-man drama group called Loose Cannons believed to be the smallest such group in the UK.

They participated in drama festivals all across Great Britain, like the renowned Anglesea Drama Festival, and even did a bit of semi-professional dinner theatre.

“It’s just a totally different side of my life which I never thought I’d revisit, being a science teacher,” Chris tells The Mayo News. “But this gives me an opportunity to put those kind of skills which are different to what a traditional drama teacher might have where they’d be onstage and going through the drama that way.”

Having the fella who taught them the periodic table and quadratic equations teach them how to critique the Cripple of Inishman will certainly be an interesting experience for the students.

And that’s a good thing in many ways, according to Dr Áine Moran.

“You kind of tend to pigeonhole drama, film and theatre into the English department,” she notes. “But I really feel excited as well to be plucking someone out of the science department. I think it twists people’s perception of pigeon-holing and boxing and who does what and what kid is attracted to this kind of a subject or that kind of a subject. Over the last few years, it has been really exciting to see students choose a really diverse and personalised selection of subjects.”

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Diversity

The subject has already been piloted in the school with the Transition Year Students. According to Ms Moran, several students enrolled in Transition Year last September specifically in anticipation of the subject being on offer in Fifth Year.

The interest is clearly there, and the school are confident of having at least eight students in Mayo’s very first Drama, Theatre and Film Studies class.

But how does it differ from Leaving Cert English, which touches on the three aforementioned disciplines to varying degrees?

“That was definitely a question from me was how it was going to come about as a subject,” and myself and Chris have been undergoing training with it,” explains Catherine Conway.

“From that training, it’s very much apparent that the knowledge and understanding is coming out of practical things as opposed to the way it might be taught in an English classroom, it’s in that practical rehearsal space that you are learning about the topics. None of the texts are the same as the English course and the texts that you are allowed to pick yourself, they can’t overlap with the English course. You have to pick more diverse things.”

One key component of the course is learning how to critique the various art forms. Chris sees this as being very transferable to other subjects.

“There is no other focus like that on any of the other courses,” he says.

Covering three different mediums, few Leaving Cert subjects will appeal to as broad a range of students as this one, according to Catherine Conway.

“It has a place for everyone,” says Catherine, who studied classical singing under Louisburgh native Anne Marie Gibbons.

“It’s not necessarily the singer or the actor, because everyone has a place in the process of it and some of our students would maybe more favour the film side and some would favour the drama side and some would favour the kind of more technical aspects and some want to be in the spotlight and perform and there really is a space for all of those students to excel in a subject like this.”

In the words of Áine Moran, ‘all the stars aligned’ when the school received a €500,000 devolved government grant to refurbish a building across the road.

In addition to being the ‘creative centre’ for the Drama, Theatre and Film Studies course, the facility also boasts a kitchen and hair salon that will be used by Leaving Cert Applied classes.

“There is a lot of creative stuff going on in that space,” says Áine.

And it’s only getting started.