No demand for new primary school in Navan, says Educate Together chair

There is no demand for a new primary school in Navan and the schools already operating in the towm are "well able" to cope with any demand from the local population, the chairperson of the town's Educate Together school said this week. The statement by Sean Love comes as representatives of 12 primary schools in St Mary's Parish in Navan prepare to meet Meath VEC officials tonight (Wednesday) to discuss the VEC's project to establish a new community national school. The VEC has already advertised for a principal for the school and is actively pursuing a site for the institution. A new model of education which will see children of all religious faiths and none educated in such a school under the patronage of the VEC is being promoted outside Dublin for the first time. Two community national schools are already operating in the Dublin area in a pilot scheme promoted by the Department of Education and Science. Wednesday's meeting, to be held in Knightsbrook Hotel in Trim, will see representatives of 12 schools in St Mary's Parish in Navan meet with Meath VEC CEO Peter Kierans and Dr Christy Duffy, director of the Community National School project. Dr Duffy will make a presentation on the project to the representatives. Mr Kierans has already meet with a number of representatives of six schools in the Navan area. They included the Educate Together school's representatives. Mr Love said this week that he had attended last week's meeting with the VEC with the Educate Together acting principal Eva Boyle. He said that they had emerged from the meeting with the perception that there is no demand for a new community national school in Navan and he said that "the VEC had acknowledged this". Mr Love said that national schools in the Navan area were still accepting enrolments for this September. He added that Meath VEC "seemed as surprised as anyone else" that Navan had been chosen to establish the CNS. "The Department has been going on child benefit figures in the Navan area since 2005 as a basis for saying that the new school is necessary. We say that those figures don't stand up, that there is no demand for school places in the primary sector in Navan. None of the existing schools has flagged any demand for places," he said. He added that if the Department was so certain of its figures, it should delay for a year and see if they were verified. "They didn't consult anyone locally about this. They just dumped it on a totally unprepared VEC. They have no premises, no staff, and no site yet." Mr Love said the Department had tried to "impose" a community national school on Castleknock in Dublin. "They appointed a principal and invited enrolments. They got three pupils and the school project had to be abandoned," he claimed. There were three recently built schools in Navan, including Educate Together, which were all in temporary accommodation and needed permanent sites for schools "yet are being bypassed for the sake of a new school that nobody is asking for". He described the situation as "utterly ridiculous". Mr Love said that there was already a thriving multidenominational school in Navan - Educate Together at Commons Road - and it welcomed pupils from any area. He said that the "real crisis" in local education was in the secondary sector. He said that thought and resources should be put into this project instead of the community national school project. Meanwhile, the national head office of Educate Together said that, in connection with a report in last week's issue, it wanted to correct an impression that it had stayed away from a meeting with the Meath VEC, even though it had been invited. It pointed out that Ms Boyle and Mr Love had attended the meeting. A spokesman said that the "revolutionary" model the the VEC was proposing for multi-denominational education was nothing new as Educate Together had pioneered multi-denominational education in Ireland in 1977 and now had 56 schools offering this service throughout the country.