Coláiste Íde, the Kerry boarding school that was threatened with closure 10 years ago, has not only survived but has thrived, and offers Egyptian dancing, horse riding and driving lessons - all as Gaeilge of course. Arminta Wallace pays a visit.
The road - like all the roads on the Dingle peninsula - is narrow and winding, with every corner offering a different view of a breathtaking seascape. It seems to go on forever. Eventually, however, an enormous white house looms into view. Four stone columns support its imposing entrance; a dozen cars are parked with ring-a-rosies neatness on its circular driveway. If, as a tourist, you had strayed in by mistake, you would be forgiven for wondering what goes on in such a salubrious environment in 21st-century Ireland. A four-star country house hotel, perhaps, complete with fitness centre and spa? The country residence of a retired rock star? A discreet nip-and-tuck joint for disposing of that surplus SSIA cash?
In fact, this elegant building - which was once the home of Lord Ventry - houses the only all-Irish seven-day secondary boarding school in the country. Coláiste Íde is also one of the only schools in the world where students can bring their horses to class - so to speak. An independently-run riding school within the grounds provides tuition in showjumping at the highest level, which in Ireland means taking part in competitions at the Royal Dublin Society and at Millstreet, Co Cork.
Prospective students sometimes ask whether they can bring dogs, or cats, or even hamsters. The answer is no; they can't bring anything smaller than a pony. But given that the school was due to close, it's something of a miracle that girls - with or without horses - are still being educated here through Irish.
A decade ago, the order of nuns that had run the school since 1927, the Sisters of Mercy, announced that as the number of vocations had fallen drastically, Coláiste Íde would have to cease operations. Such closures have, in recent years, become the norm in a rapidly changing Ireland; earlier this year, the Benedictine nuns who run a boarding school at Kylemore Abbey in Co Galway announced that they'd be pulling out in the year 2010. "But thankfully," says Coláiste Íde's manager, Treasa Ní Mhainín, "a group of local business people who had a very strong interest in Coláiste Íde got together, formed a committee and took over from the nuns in 1997."
The college is now run by a charitable trust called Cairde Choláiste Íde Teoranta. Part of the rescue package involved the leasing of lands attached to the school; hence the advent of the nearby stables, run by Mandy Sweeny, in 1999. "I suppose it's like anything in business. When an opportunity comes up, you go for it," Ní Mhainín says. Her own background is in Irish-language education, and her energy and enthusiasm are infectious.
The turnaround in Coláiste Íde's fortunes hasn't been achieved without a good deal of dedication. "It was a hard slog initially. I suppose change is hard to grasp, so numbers fell dramatically for a while. But the school has been on the up in recent years - to the point where we're almost at full capacity again. In fact, 2007 is completely booked out, which is the first time this has happened since the early 1990s. And half of the 2008 class is already booked up, as is about a quarter of 2009."
Full capacity is 130 girls - which, for parents, must be a significant plus. Small class sizes are a prized rarity in contemporary education; and supporters of bilingual tuition say it gives students strong cognitive advantages, greater problem-solving ability and higher literacy levels. "Some of the girls come from gaelscoileanna," Ní Mhainín explains, "but the majority come in with base-level, primary school Irish." And then it's a case of sink or swim? What if you have a pain in your tummy and can't tell anybody? She grins wickedly. "Well, when you think about it," she says, "pain is one of the easier things to express in Irish. It's just piain."
From the time the girls get up in the morning until they go to bed at night everything is done as Gaeilge - apart from German, French and Spanish - and they sit their exams completely through Irish. "But it's not just in the classroom. There's a staff of supervisors here each and every evening of the week, and at weekends. A nurse is on duty every night. Kitchen staff, maintenance staff - absolutely everything is through Irish. Immersing them in the language in that way does make it a little bit easier."
When we embark on a walking tour of the building, I get the message pretty quickly. "Aire!" declares a notice in the shower block. "Úrlár fliuch!" Language apart, the ambience is in many respects reminiscent of the Dublin boarding school I attended in the early 1970s: the purpose-built, cell-like dormitories, each bed hermetically sealed in a wooden partition kitted out with sink, cupboard, and bedside locker.
In the old part of the house, however, there are more relaxed rooms, shared by sisters or students with special needs. And did I imagine it, or was that a Bergkamp shirt occupying pole position among the Gothic posters and boy bands adorning the walls?
At Coláiste Íde, however, the posters are no match for the windows. Every time you look out of one - which, thanks to the Herculean efforts of Lord Ventry's architect, is often - you're greeted by stunning views of sea, sky and mountains. Idyllic is too small a word for the natural beauty of the location: even the most discerning teenager, surely, couldn't be too cool for this school? I've only spent a day here, of course. It doubtless feels different when you're dragged out of bed by the bell every morning at 7.15am and packed into it again ahead of lights-out at 10.30pm. But if the rhythm of the day - punctuated by meals and study and pauses for what Ní Mhainín calls "quiet reflection and a quick prayer" - is identical here to that of any boarding school, Coláiste Íde isn't afraid to have its own take on the boarding school routine.
For one thing, the rigid hierarchy that often separates first-year students from sixth years appears to be entirely absent; the dorms are a random mixture of all levels, and girls are encouraged to hang out with those from other forms as well as their own. Everyone has to chip in with the chores, which - at least in theory - adds to the sense of a small community pulling together.
"We consider ourselves a family here," says Ní Mhainín, "so everybody pitches in, from sweeping the dorms to doing the dishes - and it's done in rotation every term. This isn't just a matter of helping with the cleaning. These are life-skills we're teaching. The girls don't necessarily think that, mind you. Some of them don't know what a J-cloth is when they first arrive."
She insists that I get the real story from the girls themselves. She descends on the lunch tables and, with lightning speed, rounds up a volunteer from each year for a chat. I find myself surrounded by five articulate and impressively assured young women: Sadhbh Ní Lubhaing, a first-year day pupil; Róisín Ní Ghaoithín and Clár Nic Innreachtaigh from second and third years; and from the senior cycle (the school has no fourth year), Sophie Ní Chuinn and Danielle Ní Churnáin.
What's the worst thing about Coláiste Íde, I ask the newly-arrived Sadhbh? The food, is the somewhat gloomy reply. And what's the worst thing they get to eat? "The chicken with the breadcrumbs on it we had for lunch today," she says.
Nevertheless, she's thinking of becoming a boarder next year - maybe the breaded chicken will grow on her. The school, according to the others, certainly does. And the second year - or so Róisísays - is a marked improvement on the first. Why? "Hmm. Well, we're allowed our mobile phones for longer - from nine at night until quarter to eight in the morning," she says. Who do they call? "Boys," they all answer on cue, amid a chorus of laughter. "No. Just my mum, really," says Róisín.
So what's good about Coláiste Íde? "Oh, everything's good - it's like an almighty sleepover. Isn't it?" I search the four faces for sarcasm or irony and find nothing but eagerness.
They tell me about how they've taken up rugby; how they do everything from Egyptian dancing and yoga to driving lessons on Saturdays; how they can study piano or banjo or play in a trad band. Seniors get to take part in the annual fashion show organised by a boys' school in Dingle to raise funds for Belarus ("the atmosphere is absolutely electric, it's so cool"); the older girls help the younger ones with learning Irish and look out for signs of homesickness or general misery; supervised study is a really good way to do your homework, because you don't talk. This last - considering the number of words per second they've produced in less than half an hour - makes sound mathematical sense.
As head ceanaire, or prefect, Danielle has rather more weight on her shoulders than most. "I got a list of my responsibilities this morning and I have to sign it," she says. "I have to make sure everyone's talking Irish and, if anyone's lonely, make sure they're all right. And if there are girls talking in the line, what you're supposed to do - well, it's not just me, there are other prefects as well - is make them stand out. Or I can actually give detentions and that."
There is an audible gulp from Róisín at this point. Everyone chortles - even Danielle who, clearly, is the antithesis of the power-crazed prefect. "In a way, you can't really be as friendly as you'd like with the girls because you have to always make sure that they're doing the right thing," she reasons. "I'd hate to be talking to someone normally and then they'd do something wrong and I'd go, 'Don't do that'. I'd hate that. So I have to keep it even all the time. That's hard going."
It's also an object lesson in the tricky business of negotiating management boundaries within a small organisation - which may just come in handy in future life. A recent graduate of the college, Dearbhla O'Sullivan, now works for Zoetrope PR in Dublin. While at Coláiste Íde, she says, she and her classmates renegotiated a few boundaries of their own. "Walkmans were banned, but of course everyone had one. My sister gave me a tip for saving batteries; rewinding the tapes by hand. Torches were also banned, but we hid them in our laundry bags - along with the Walkman."
But she also recalls less illicit pleasures. "Glanachán was a spring clean at Christmas and summer before we went home for long holidays. We'd wax the floors, polish the brass, dust everything and it was lots of fun because it was a party. We would have the Christmas play after, or the Slán in the summer (goodbye to the sixth years)."
Things were very different in the old days. The school was set up in 1927 by the Department of Education as one of five preparatory colleges to provide education through Irish for students who wished to train as primary school teachers. This system was discontinued in 1961 and Coláiste Íde became an ordinary boarding school; but the nuns continued to rule their domain with a rod of iron. Inevitably, there were those who found the rigid discipline uncongenial. "I hated it," one student who left in the early 1960s says. "I remember we would go to breakfast in silence. You'd speak your first word at maybe 11 o'clock. And directly after the Christmas hols, we went back to a retreat. Silence for the week, just when one would be dying to exchange news of dances, boys etc."
Under this system, students did an examination at the age of 14, as a result of which places were allocated to the various preparatory colleges around the country. "For a lot of parents that was a great bonus," she says, "because at 14 your career was mapped out for you in what were very difficult times, job-wise. But I just hated everything about it. I look back on it as four years that I don't want to think about."
But 77-year-old Mary Puech, who was at Coláiste Íde from 1944 to 1948, enjoyed her time there. "It's true that the nuns weren't gentle or kind," she says." Sister Columbanus was the head. Sister Borgia, her deputy, used to get very excited about the trees and the nature around the school grounds. She would exclaim that she saw 'millte millún' (a thousand million) boats in Dingle Bay. That's one thing Coláiste Íde had: beauty in the surroundings, and in the building itself." Puech's time at the school certainly didn't crush her independent spirit. In the 1950s, when the rest of Ireland was shivering in the depths of emotional and economic doldrums, she blithely hitch-hiked across Europe with three friends. Shortly afterwards, while working as a teacher in Naas, she met an Indian man called Maurice at the Crystal Ballroom in Dublin and, to the consternation of her family, married him. They sailed for India and raised a family in his home town of Meerut, near Delhi.
Meanwhile, on the basketball court at Coláiste Íde, the girls are getting into some serious practice routines under the supervision of their coach, Regina, who - according to Róisí- "could turn a team of headless chickens into All-Ireland champions". I earwig diligently as they skip around the court, laughing and chattering, but hear not a single word of English - except when I, being sadly deficient in the Gaeilge department, break into the second language. As I walk back through the stone portico and drive away, I feel a twinge of regret. For what? Lost youth? Missed opportunities? The passage of time? For the life of me, I can't say. Three days after I get home, however, an e-mail arrives that would cheer up a wake.
"A Arminta dhil," it begins. "I hope you enjoyed your day here in Coláiste Íde and that you experienced even a little bit of the atmosphere we share every day. We had a great chat but we really didn't have enough time, I could go on for days! So where will I start?" With grace, humour, and boundless verve it brings me up to speed on life at Coláiste Íde, 2006-style.
"I better go now though as the bell for study just went," it concludes. "But thanks a million for taking the time to read this! Le gach dea guí, Róisín Ní Gaoithín."
• There will be open days at Coláiste Íde on October 21st and 22nd. Interested parties must call in advance to make an appointment on 066-9151211