St Clement's Redemptorist College : an analytical study in the context of the educational system in the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

Limerick city is situated in the county borough of Co. Limerick, a western county of the ancient province of Munster. County Limerick is today one of the 26 counties that, since the formal separation from the British Commonwealth in 1949, together form the Republic of Ireland. Limerick, with a population of over 55,000, is the republic's third largest city after Dublin and Cork. It combines the dignified aspect of antiquity as may be seen in King John's Castle, built after a visit by King John in 1210, with the activity of a progressive town, exemplified in the Shannon Hydro-electric power plant. The city is divided into three distinct historical sectors - Englishtown, the oldest part of the city, built on an island in the Shannon River; Irishtown, which started to take shape in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and Newtown Perry, the modem centre with many beautiful Georgian terraces, which began in 1769 (Greenwood M., 1994, p. 209). This study was carried out in November 1995 in St Cement's Redemptorist College, situated in South Circular Road, a one-way artery road that joins the University city of Cork with the south west of Ireland. I think that in order to understand fully the structure of St. Cement's School, one has to viev1 it in the wider context of Irish Educational System. Article 42.1 of the 1936-37 Constitution, which is still in vogue, stresses that the primary educator of the child is "'the Family", with inalienable rights and duties to provide "according to its means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of the children". Further on, in Article 42.4 one reads : "the State shall endeavour to supplement, and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative". Until the 1960s, 11 the system was one in which the State provided the bulk of the finance while owning and exercising a managerial function ... over but a small proportion of educational institutions" (Breen R., et al., 1991). An OECD report in 1965 "Investment in Education" showed fears about shortage of trained manpower for the expected needs of the Irish economy in the 1970s. These fears brought about great changes in the Educational system: new subjects were introduced such as Accountancy and Engineering; the Comprehensive and Community type of school with broader curricula were started; third-level Regional Technical Colleges were embarked on, and all children got the chance to proceed to second-level education free of charge. In spite of all good wishes, Ireland's economic problems do not permit the exchequer to allocate sufficient sums of the Capital Expenditure on non-teaching costs, for example on school equipment, libraries, textbooks, grants, running and maintenance costs and students' welfare services. […]