Limerick leaders show they are in tune with the times

What Ní Mhaoláin didn’t realise was that she was to be awarded a special prize for her success with Team Ireland’s under-15 handball side. Ní Mhaoláin has gone on to win silver in the singles at this month’s world handball championships in Calgary, Canada, and doubles gold with Bridin Dinan, who attends St Joseph’s Secondary School, in Tulla, Co Clare, ranked 207.

“We wanted to honour someone who has shown great commitment,” says Ní Bhriain. “Caitríona gives a lot of her time to the school — she plays in the trad group so often plays at school occasions. It was a big surprise for her and it was popular among the girls: a lot of the girls know her because of her music and because she has two sisters in the school. It was lovely.”

It was a memorable day for individual girls such as Ní Mhaoláin, but also for the whole student body. O’Sullivan, who recalled playing hockey for Villiers Secondary School, ranked 66, against Laurel Hill Colaiste FCJ students, and being beaten by them, said she knew how strong the tradition for sport was in the school. She also congratulated all the girls on being nominated the No 1 school in the country. “It was nice to be honoured and affirmed by Jan O’Sullivan, it’s extra special when someone from the outside comes in and congratulates them,” says Ní Bhriain. “We encourage our students to have ambition wherever their talent lies. We are committed to that.”

Today, Laurel Hill Colaiste FCJ tops The Sunday Times Parent Power survey for the second consecutive year in the 12-year history of our ranking of Ireland’s top 400 schools. It has sent an average of 92.4% of its students on to university over the past three years. Parent Power is the country’s most informative league table of secondary schools’ performance as it is based on the percentage of students progressing to university and university-level institutions on the island of Ireland, as well as progression to all third-level institutions, averaged over three years to erase annual anomalies.

A small school with just over 400 students, Laurel Hill’s cohort is girls only. In 1845, a school was established on the site by Marie Madeleine d’Houet, the founder of the Sisters Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ). In 1967, two schools on the same site joined the free education scheme — Laurel Hill Secondary School FCJ, ranked at 52, and Laurel Hill Colaiste FCJ, which is a gaelcholaiste, or Irish-language school, located outside of the Gaeltacht. “Our focus isn’t necessarily academic, but is also on personal development,” says Ní Bhriain. “We received our Gaelbhratach this year, which is a flag for the promotion of the Irish language, and which looks at the culture outside of the classroom.”

Second in today’s table, the Presentation Brothers College in Cork has moved up from seventh place. A fee-paying boys’ school, it sent an average of 87.8% of its students to university over three years.

“Our emphasis is on getting kids into higher education,” says principal Ken Whyte. “A lot of the courses that the boys go for, including medicine, dentistry, veterinary, agriculture, are in university only. So that increases the percentage of students that are going to university.”

Renowned for its rugby players (past pupils include Ronan O’Gara and Peter Stringer, as well as current Ireland players Simon Zebo and Peter O’Mahony), other sports include rowing, cricket, basketball, sailing and soccer. “We believe active boys make better students and have a better quality of life,” says Whyte.

Presentation students are also encouraged to have social responsibility: they are taught religion from first year up to the Leaving Certificate class, and are involved in a charity called Share, which helps the elderly and builds homes.

“You will find past pupils in charitable institutions in Cork city, as well as in all the sporting societies,” says Whyte. “I was speaking to a past pupil who had qualified as a doctor and he had just spent some time helping out in Nepal. They understand that they owe something back to society.”

There is also an emphasis on personal responsibility: from second year, students have to make their own way to Presentation’s sports grounds, which are two miles away from the school’s city centre location. The school provides a lot of guidance, including study skills, in second year, which the authors of the Post-Primary Longitudinal Study at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) have identified as crucial in laying the foundations for academic success in later years.

There are 2.5m people living in Dublin and Leinster, compared to 1.2m in Cork and Munster. According to CSO figures from 2013, the average annual household income in Dublin is €41,508, compared to €31,166 in the southwest. Despite these disadvantages, when it comes to progression to university Munster schools are punching well above their weight: the southern province has 39 schools in the top 100, compared with Leinster’s 43.

One of the reasons for the outperforming Munster schools might be the collegiality that exists, particularly among Limerick schools: for the past 10 years, principals and deputy principals from second-level schools in Limerick have been meeting regularly to share information.

“We discuss literacy, school development and enrolment; for example, we had a focus day where we ran a workshop on special needs education,” says Ní Bhriain. “The association has members of all types of voluntary sector schools, including Catholic schools and Education and Training Board schools. We’re all proud of our school but we are interested in the bigger picture.”

Other factors affecting the positive performance of schools in Munster include the location of the National Centre of Academic Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching in Limerick. Based at the University of Limerick, the centre develops national teaching skills in maths, science and technology but also runs outreach programmes for schools. There is weekly tutoring available for sixth-year students by the university students.

Areas which traditionally have not seen a high proportion of students go on to university, such as the midlands, have seen some schools improve dramatically. Gaelcholaiste Cheatharlach, Askea in Co Carlow, has gone up from rank 138 to 81, Colaiste Pobail Osrai, Ormond Road, Kilkenny, has moved from 133 to 58. Both are gaelcholaisti, like Laurel Hill Colaiste FCJ.

This type of school is disproportionately successful in terms of progression to university. There are just 42 gaelcholaisti in the republic (including seven schools which have opened since 2011, and nine schools with Irish-medium units or subjects within an overall English-medium setting), yet 29 of them are in our top 400. That means that while they represent just 5% of the 722 second-level schools in the country, they take up 7% of our top 400, 18% of our top 50 and 30% of our top ten.

Scoil Chuimsitheach Chiarain in Galway is another school that has been moving consistently up the table. A Gaeltacht school with a small cohort of about 300, today it has entered the table at 168. Before the economic crash in 2008, a lot of their students went into the construction industry. Now, students are being more savvy about their third-level choices and where job opportunities lie.

“We now have a compulsory transition year, so when they are making those decisions, they have a bit of maturity,” says principal Seán Mac Donncha. “Before, they might have gone to the same university that their friends were going to, now they make informed choices.”

Scoil Chuimsitheach Chiarain is firmly rooted in the community: it takes in all students, girls and boys, in the catchment area, so there is a broad mix of interests and levels of ability. It is a Deis school, which means that it receives extra funding. Crucially, one of the supports that these schools have held onto is the career guidance teaching hours, which were cut in the 2012 budget. “That has been an essential element in supporting progression to third level,” says Mac Donncha. “There are a huge breadth of options, it’s a minefield. It’s about making the correct choice.”

Tellingly, many of the top-performing schools have all retained teacher guidance hours. Fee-paying schools, such as Presentation Brothers, Scoil Mhuire and Alexandra College — an all girls’ school in Dublin 6, ranked at No 6 in the country — pay for guidance tuition out of their fees. Laurel Hill Colaiste FCJ made the decision to make cuts elsewhere in order to fund it.

Laurel Hill’s two-year lead of the table is also remarkable in that it is the first girls’ school to take the lead since 2008: its neighbour, boys’ boarding school Glenstal Abbey in Murroe, Co Limerick, and Gonzaga College in Dublin 6, have shared the honours over the past six years. This is despite the domination of girls’ schools at the top of the table. Six out of ten of the top schools in today’s table are girls’ schools. However, no research supports the idea that a single-sex environment benefits girls.

Dr Geraldine Mooney Simmie, who lectures in education policy at the University of Limerick, sees the single-sex system as anachronistic. “For a 21st century Ireland, where you want respect for both men and women, a single-sex school could not be something that’s regarded as top-performing,” she said. “Look how behind the times our government is, with so few women in our parliament making decisions. So I wouldn’t see single-sex schools as being successful on that basis alone.”

Barbara Ennis, principal of Alexandra College, another all girls’ school which has been consistently in the top ten of our table in recent years, disagrees. “Schools are not a microcosm of society,” says Ennis. “They are deliberate constructions where education takes place. Students do well where a particular type of ethos is given a high profile in the school, where an atmosphere is created where it is OK to say that you want to do well, where it’s OK to stand up and speak up and express your opinion, even if it’s an unpopular one. It’s easier to develop that culture in an all-girls’ environment.”

The top schools in today’s league table all share many of the same traits: high expectations for academic achievement, variety in extra-curricular activities, and a sense of belonging to the school community. Another characteristic, however, is imbuing a strong sense of the student’s place in the world.