Principal Patricia Vaughan at the entrance to Furglan NS. Photograph: John Sheridan.
FURGLAN NATIONAL SCHOOL is at risk of closure unless it can enrol four extra pupils by the end of September.
Currently seven pupils are enrolled at the North Clare school which has two full-time teachers, a full-time special needs assistant and a special education teacher who is based in Furglan but also provides five hours in Inagh NS and five hours in Lahinch NS.
By September 30th, their enrolment numbers have to reach eleven to guarantee the school remains open for the next academic year. “We want to save our school and we want another four children on our roll books by September 30th,” principal of Furglan NS, Patricia Vaughan explained.
Last year, eight schools closed across the country, none of these were in Co Clare. All associated with Furglan NS are confident and hopeful they will not join the list of schools to have closed their doors.
Areas within the catchment of Furglan include Lahinch, Ennistymon, Inagh, Ballyvraneen, Lavarreen, Moananagh and Moughna Cross. Patricia appealed to families in the catchment to strongly consider enrolling their children in Furglan to preserve the school’s future.
She told The Clare Echo, “It breaks my heart because this isn’t just any ordinary school, this school is very special, it is a very special school and I know the people in the community will be very shocked. They may suspect our numbers are pretty low but I don’t think anybody realises we’re in a position that our school is in a position where we may not be open in twelve months. This appeal is to make people aware that if there are people who have moved to the area or in the surrounding areas of North Clare that have four year old or five year old children that are not enrolled in other schools to please consider us, please give our school a chance”.
Last Wednesday, an emergency Board of Management meeting was held and lasted over two hours where it was agreed that they must go public with their story to fight for the future of Furglan NS. “It has been a very difficult decision for us, all along we had been hoping against hope, we had done everything we can, we’ve a very vibrant Facebook page, we got Dunphy Communications to launch a new Facebook page for us, it brought in a lot of viewers and interest but unfortunately didn’t bring in numbers for us, we came back in September and realised things weren’t looking so good”.
“We said we could sit down and do nothing, we could look out the window and see what would come in the door which we had been doing or we said we could be proactive and do something about this, that is what we are doing, we’re launching a full steam ahead effort to try save Furglan, this beautiful vibrant school which is full of energy, love, kindness, fabulous staff, beautiful children, supportive parents who are there for us morning, noon and night, fantastic supportive Board of Management, a fabulous community which comes behind us in times of trouble, every single year our Monster Draw the Furglan community comes behind us, we’ve raised over €5000 every year to provide activities for the children. We have a lot at stake, this community is important, Furglan is a very important school, this community is exceptionally important, we lost our church here maybe 18 or 19 years ago, we’re going to do our utmost that we will not lose our school too,” she added.
At its peak, Furglan NS have in the region of seventy students. The new school opened in 1964 with the old school built in 1878. Patricia who has been principal for the past twenty five years recalled, “there would have been three classrooms and three classroom-teachers with somewhere in the region of seventy students, at the time we were coming from a much bigger area over to Moughna Cross to the Ennis Rd, we had children coming from there on the road to Inagh, the catchment was bigger and we haven’t had children coming from there in quite a while, there was bigger families then with seven, eight, nine, ten or even eleven children, there was a family once with thirteen children and if we had a family of thirteen they were keeping the school open. Things have changed, people are having smaller families, this is something which is happening all over, it is not just North or West Clare, it is happening in Kerry and Donegal”.
Numbers have gradually decreased in the school which had 48 children enrolled in 2013. For their ‘COVID confirmation’, ten students were in sixth class alone in 2020. “About twelve years ago we had forty eight children enrolled but we had seven families with three children in the school so that is twenty one already, all those children have well gone through the school with a number of years. We had classes of eight, of seven, of six year on year, with such heavy losses in sixth class our numbers really have been dwindling since 2016 and 2017. I can remember in 2018 we had 22 students enrolled, that is only seven years ago so in the last seven years we’ve gone from 22 to 19 to 18 to 16 to 13, last year we had 12 and were one over, as of this minute we have seven so we need four more children. It is rural depopulation and the families aren’t there, the building isn’t going on in Furglan, there’s no new build around and it is very hard to get planning here, a lot of our families have passed through, they were quite big families with children and they have gone from us, we’re now in a situation where we’re down to these numbers like many schools in Ireland, in North Clare and West Clare we don’t have to go outside the county to find them”.
Alongside Patricia in the staff is Deputy Principal, Monica Dilleen, SET teacher, Thomas McConigley and SNA Karen Irwin. With such a strong teacher to pupil ratio, the students of Furglan NS are getting what could be described as private tuition for their first-level education. “The quality of education here is absolutely second to none and the wellbeing, the children are looked after so much, their care issues and kindness, looking after them when they fall, picking them up and caring for them, it is like a family here. My staff here treat the children as if they are family members. Because our numbers are so low, we are able to do individualised plans for each child, the children that are very good we can move them on a grade in their textbooks, the children that are finding it difficult we can send them out for our special education needs teacher, Thomas McConigley who were so lucky to have appointed here twelve months ago, we’re sharing him with two other schools but the majority of the hours are here with five hours going to Lahinch NS and five hours going to Inagh NS but Thomas is based here so children get an opportunity if they are experiencing difficulty that they have a special education teacher to go to. We also have a full-time SNA, we’re very lucky to have Karen with us, she is absolutely wonderful, she is very good with the children, she is very kind and caring, taking them out for movement breaks, helping children if they have emotional or behavioural issues which happens from time to time, taking them out and giving them one to one time, all of that is provided for here”.
Her passion for the school is infectious and she speaks with pride of the exploits of past pupils who have gone on to represent Ennistymon’s senior footballers including Liam Cotter, the McNamara brothers David and Brian alongside her own son Joshua.
Every student that has passed through Furglan NS has been encouraged to follow their dreams no matter how big or small. “It is a place for the community to come together and to meet, it is lovely for the people in the area passing the school that they see there is vibrancy inside here with loving staff, fabulous children running around the school grounds and beautiful expansive green that we have out the back, playing their football. We’ve had so many talented children come through this school, talented footballers and hurlers, we’re a school that has brought to fruition so many people’s dreams, children growing up and having their dreams,” Patricia said.
