St.Mary’s Brollagh school
A PUBLIC meeting is being held tonight (Wednesday) in St Mary’s High School, Brollagh in a bid to stave off the threat of closure.
At the public meeting the future of post-primary education in the area will be discussed as will the plans for greater cross-border cooperation with schools in Donegal to help retain education in North West Fermanagh.
Theresa Leonard, chairman of the North West Education Action Group said there was a need for the meeting as the last public one took place last April.
“It is really just to let the parents know and everyone know where we are at. We have a proposal for crossborder education and it is about moving that forward and making it a reality.”
The consultation process with CCMS and the governors, staff, parents and pupils at the school closes in the middle of October and one the key reasons for the meeting is to ensure the community rally against recommendations that the school should close.
“People have to respond to that and we need to make sure everyone has sent a letter to say they are opposed.”
Theresa hopes that Brollagh will become a completely new model for education, through the implementation of a pilot cross border education system.
“We’re in a unique position. Of all the schools in Northern Ireland due to close we are so close to the border. It is up to the ministers how it works on the ground, but we have put these details in our proposal.”
She added that the group’s primary goal is retaining education, but recognises that may come at a price.
“We want to retain education, not necessarily the site at St Mary’s.”
Local MLA Phil Flanagan raised the issue of St Mary’s with Education Minister John O’Dowd in Stormont on Monday.
In response Mr O’Dowd urged all relevant managing authorities to take heed of what local communities are saying to them.
“If alternative plans come forward, those need to be critiqued by the managing authorities to assess their value and, perhaps, their limitations. They certainly deserve to be critiqued and evaluated by the relevant managing authority, and that is the case in Brollagh.”
Mr O’Dowd added that it was not he or CCMS that those at Brollagh had to convince of its merits, but rather it was the parents in the area.
“You have to convince them to send their children to the school, because time and time again, parents, for whatever reason, decide to send their children past their local school to another school. If you start to convince parents in the locality of the viability of the school, you will have won the battle.”
The public meeting is being held tonight at 8pm in St Mary’s High School, Brollagh.
Theresa added: “We need bums on seats, that’s the bottom line. We need the support of the community and we need to stand up and say we don’t want the school to close.”
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