Westport parents left ‘extremely frustrated and unhappy’ following meeting at Sacred Heart School

PARENTS of girls attending the all-girls Sacred Heart School (SHS) in Westport were left ‘extremely frustrated and unhappy’ after a meeting where questions were raised regarding the withdrawal of curricular cooperation with the all-boys Rice College.

Over 50 people attended a Parents Association meeting in the school last Tuesday, where the withdrawal of curricular cooperation was discussed at length.

The meeting heard that the SHS board of management took the decision to withdraw curricular cooperation in the best interest of the school after an amalgamation with Rice College was ruled out.

Tables had to be removed from the room to make room for chairs after a larger-than-expected number of parents showed up to the meeting. Some attendees stood in the doorway and outside of the room due to the lack of space while others left early after the meeting ran to two hours’ length.

“We got nowhere fast,” said one parent who spoke to The Mayo News on the condition of anonymity.

Several parents of children in both Rice College and SHS have contacted The Mayo News to express disappointment about the withdrawal of curricular cooperation by SHS.

Many parents who spoke at the meeting complained about a lack of consultation with parents regarding the withdrawal of cooperation with Rice College. An SHS teacher who spoke at the meeting also said she had been ‘in the dark’ on the matter.

Formally notified

Parents were first formally notified of the withdrawal of curricular collaboration in July, at which point Third Year students had already signed up for Transition Year.

Parents were reminded again of the absence of curricular collaboration in a letter sent last month.

The move has resulted in students no longer attending classes in the other school and the staging of two separate Transition Year musicals in 2025. One-hundred-and-seventy-four students from both schools took part in the last joint-staging of the Transition Year Musical earlier on in the year.

SHS is under the trusteeship of Ceist, an umbrella organisation for over 100 schools under the patronage of religious orders.

Similarly, Rice College is under the trusteeship of the Christian Brothers Congregation.

Both schools have received permission to offer co-education and Rice College is due to admit girls for the first time in September 2025.

SHS are planning to advance plans for co-education ‘from 2026 onwards’ when sufficient facilities are provided.

The school is engaging with the Department of Education for a new school building with accommodation for 600 students in over 40 classrooms, including a full suite of practical rooms.

However, due to the complicated nature of the site - which is located beside a river and on a slope - it is understood that a new school building may not be delivered for several years.

In 2022, Karen Hawkshaw, Senior Architect with the Planning and Building Unit at the Department of Education, described SHS as ‘the most challenging school site [Sacred Heart, I have come across in 17 years’.

The school, which was established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1925, is currently using modular accommodation due to the insufficient capacity.

The existing current facilities were discussed at last Tuesday’s meeting, with some parents raising concerns about the lack of canteen facilities.

The school’s Parents Association is to write to the Department of Education regarding the school’s facilities.

Sarah McGreal, Principal of the Sacred Heart School, said she would relay the parents’ concerns to the board of management.

Ms McGreal responded to concerns about several topics at the meeting, where she was questioned repeatedly about the board’s decision to withdraw curricular collaboration.

The school principal acts as the secretary of the board of management but does not have a vote.

Expressed disappointment

Ms McGreal expressed disappointment at the meeting that the withdrawal of curricular cooperation between the schools had made the front page of The Mayo News.

In a letter sent to parents on the day of the meeting (October 8), Ms McGreal reiterated that the degree of curricular cooperation between the schools had been declining.

She said that subjects such as Computer Science and Leaving Certificate Physical Education ‘are limited in capacity and therefore if demand was significant in the host school then there were no available places to be offered to SHS students’.

The school continues to offer a full range of 14 senior cycle subject options and the senior cycle curriculum is being continuously reviewed by its board of management.

“Other issues arose such as different time tables, start times and … which made academic curricular cooperation difficult to maintain also,” Ms McGreal wrote.

Ms McGreal said that joint-staging of the school musical with Rice College had placed ‘an exceptional and unsustainable expectation’ on SHS, which hosted the January production of ‘High School Musical Jr’.

SHS is due to stage a standalone production of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ in early 2025.

“The school musical, which is one of the highlights of the TY Programme and indeed the school year, is nonetheless a huge undertaking on an annual basis as SHS are challenged to internally recruit and form a musical team to take on what is an extracurricular experience for the students involved,” Ms McGreal wrote.

“The challenge of providing opportunities for almost 200 TY students between both schools has placed an exceptional and unsustainable expectation on our school, to which, the responsibility for hosting, staging, directing, and producing the school musical lies.”

The school is pressing ahead with plans to occupy the old Scoil Phádraig building at Altamount Street on a temporary basis from September 2025. This is despite concerns from Holy Trinity NS, for whom the building had earmarked as a permanent premises.

Addressing this issue, Ms McGreal said that the board of management “considered it prudent to prioritise continued access to facilities for SHS students and not have the added responsibility of accommodating a large cohort of students from another school on an ongoing basis.”

She also described the move to co-educational options in Westport as ‘a positive and much sought after development for the entire community and school catchment’.