Cork students email Minister of Education over poor school conditions
Students have sent an email to the Minister for Education expressing their frustration at the poor conditions they're enduring at a secondary school in North Cork.
Nearly three years ago a major fire broke out at the Patrician Academy in Mallow and caused extensive damage.
Yet students say not a single block has been laid on the school site since, while they've been taught in different outside locations and had to endure a prefabricated toilet block which is a health hazard.
Eoghan Kenny, a member of the student council, penned the correspondence on their behalf and told Minister Joe McHugh they "feel the government and your department in particular, have neglected our school".
"I regularly see you opening state-of-the-art school buildings across the country and as students we ask ourselves are we not equal to those students? And if we are equal, why are we being subjected to such harsh conditions?" Eoghan wrote.
He said that for four months of his Transition Year, a number of year groups were being taught in dressing rooms in the local GAA complex.
"For the remaining months of fourth year, we were situated in the nearby primary school. For all of my fifth year, my year group and I were situated in the local centre for the Irish Wheelchair Association, and in spite of our teachers' best efforts this situation was far from ideal," Eoghan wrote.
This year they have returned to the school campus.
"However, we are working out of prefabricated rooms that are too cold in the winter and are beginning to become too hot to even sit in as we enter summer," Eoghan said.
He and his classmates say the prefabricated toilet facilities are rotting away, are constantly flooded and are thus a health hazard and not fit for purpose.
"During a recent Whole School Evaluation (WSE), inspectors from your department noted the lack of facilities on campus i.e. only one construction room to cater for 550 boys and only one science lab that has access to gas," he told Minister McHugh.
Through an email you may try to convince us that you haven’t forgotten our school or that planning is underway, but until we see actual building progress being made, we cannot and will not take your word for it.
Eoghan pointed out that they had to fund their own school gym and AstroTurf and have to cap the number of students entering the secondary school due to inadequate space.
"For nearly three years now, not one single block has been laid on the school site, illustrating the lacklustre response from your department. Do you really think this is good enough? If your son was a student in our school, would you think these sub-standard conditions were an acceptable environment to learn in," Eoghan told the minister.
It is understand planning permission will be lodged next month with construction likely to start in the latter half of next year.
