GALLERY: Hard work and dedication comes to fruition for St Paul’s school community

It was a very exciting start to the new school year in St. Paul's Primary School this September as the staff and pupils moved into their newly built, €14m state of the art, 32 classroom school building.

The building project has been on-going for the past two years and finally the Board of Management were given the keys this summer. The building cost over €14 million and consists of 32 mainstream classrooms, a new Special Education Unit with two classrooms, SET rooms, a PE sports hall almost 400m2 in size, electric vehicle charging points, four basketball courts and a large playground.

The final part of the overall project is a new Astroturf pitch which is currently under construction and will be ready early next year.

St. Paul’s Primary School is a large, urban primary school in Abbeylands, Navan with over 700 students and over 40 members of staff. It has served the local community for the past 40 years and is renowned for its academic excellence as well as a long tradition of sports, music and the arts.

Describing the facilities included in the new school building, a spokesperson for St Paul’s Primary School said:

“The new school has been equipped with innovative, high spec, interactive panels in each classroom and all the SET rooms. The school is an eco-friendly school which has PV panels on the south facing roof to generate its own electricity. All the lights and electrical sockets work on sensors and dim down or shut off when not in use.

The school is now harvesting rain-water, and this is used to provide water to flush toilets throughout the building.”

The school places emphasis on integrating technology into teaching methodologies and has invested heavily in over 150 ipads and 80 chrome books and laptops in the past year as explained:

“Coding equipment has also been purchased in order to stimulate the children’s interests, encourage creativity and give new perspective to problem-solving.

“The school management ensured that the wired and wireless infrastructure, along with fibre broadband installed into the new school building, was to a high specification, reliable and with the ability to cope with all the devices available for use by the students and staff.”

Management said they wanted to ‘future proof’ the school for the years ahead to keep up to speed with ever changing technology and they have succeeded in doing so with an impressive new ICT framework.

The principal, Eileen McCaughey said that both she and the whole staff of St. Paul’s want to pay tribute to the previous principal, Mrs. Patricia Fahy, and the previous boards of management who were involved in the proposing, planning and designing of the new school in its early stages.

“They had a vision for St. Paul’s over the past two decades to help the school evolve and serve the current educational requirements of the area and for many generations to come,” she said.

“They fund-raised in a variety of innovative ways over the years and this money has been used to kit out the school with many added extras as well as covering the costs of the new astro turf pitch.

Their hard work and dedication have finally come to fruition.

“As the school embarks on this new era, the Board of Management along with the principal, deputy principal, senior management of the school, staff and pupils look forward to enjoying their new environment and have high expectations that St Paul’s will serve the educational needs of the local community for many decades to come.”

Their school motto summarises their dedication to each and every student that walks through their doors. ‘Mol and óige agus tiocfaidh sí’.