Highest attendance since Famine

It was like a new begining for Dromleigh National School in Kilmichael, Co Cork, last week when eighty students returned to the newly-extended school - the highest number in attendance since the Great Famine.

Dromleigh National School, which lies between Macroom and Dunmanway in beautiful West Cork, is the oldest school in the Republic still in use on the same site, according to the Department of Education and Science. It was founded in 1840. and that year had an enrolment of 232, all housed in one room. In the 1930s and 1940s, Dromleigh became a one-teacher school as numbers fell to fewer than thirty.

To help cater for the increased numbers in the school now, it has a new extension, which is comprised of an additional classroom and an office.

Principal, Anne Bradley, vice-principal Edel Sheehan and teacher Maire McSweeney, are delighted with the new rooms, which were opened by the Minister for Education and Science, Micheal Martin, at the start of the school holidays.

The rise in numbers to date is due, Maire McSweeney says, to the fact that "a lot of people are now choosing to stay in the locality", in particular some families from other countries as well as people who work in a multi-national company located near Macroom.