Chalk Talk Special: St Oliver's always led by example

AISHLING MONAGHAN - CHALK TALK EDITOR

St Oliver Plunkett NS opened its doors to its first pupils in September 1975, setting several firsts for a school in Navan - it was the first mixed school in the town, the first mainstream school north of the river, and the first school comprised exclusively of lay teachers.

Navan in 1975 was a very different place compared to today. The population was around 4,000, a fraction of what it is now, and the northern end of the town, up Flower Hill, was developing rapidly with estates such as Silverlawns, Blackcastle, and Troytown Heights having been built in the previous decade. The big employers in the town were the furniture industry and Navan Carpets, while the opening of Tara Mines in 1973 led to a surge in employment and the area's economic fortunes.

The rapidly expanding population of the town north of the river necessitated the provision of a new school, and under the direction of Fr MV Daly, that came to fruition.

The school was named after St Oliver Plunkett, even though the Oldcastle-born saint was “Blessed” at the time - his canonisation took place very shortly afterwards in October 1975.

Mr Howard was the first principal, and he oversaw a rapid increase in enrolment numbers in the school’s first decade.

Because of delays with building works, the school opened two weeks later than scheduled. For that fortnight the pupils were accommodated in other primary schools in the town, notably St Anne’s and Mercy Convent. This meant that junior infants who started school in September 1975 spent their first two weeks in another school in the town before moving north to St Oliver’s.

At the time, Navan’s school landscape was quite different from today—the Brothers (Scoil Mhuire) was a boys-only school, while St Anne’s and Mercy were mixed for junior and senior infants and girls-only thereafter.

In the 1970s, Navan was “only an hour from Dublin”, the town had no one-way streets, dual carriageways, roundabouts, inner-relief road, and no shopping centre.

To reach St Oliver’s from Dublin meant crossing the Boyne via the old Kilcarn bridge, travelling via Academy Street to Market Square, before crossing the river again and heading up Flower Hill.

Likewise, heading into the town meant travelling down Flower Hill and up Watergate Street. In those days, the Garda station was where the town hall is now, the current Garda station was an army barracks, and the Post Office was where McDonald’s is today.

The school was built using the latest architectural design and materials, with features like ensuite toilet facilities in each classroom, cloakroom areas and sinks/kitchen areas in classrooms, central heating, an intercom system, overhead projectors, and a school hall for PE and other events.

The pupils didn’t appreciate these luxuries until they moved on to secondary school. Another innovation the school had was the use of “shared area” classrooms, where two different class groups, each with their own teacher, shared a large common space for collaborative learning while also having their own smaller classrooms to the side, all in the one classroom complex.

In those days, SNAs didn’t exist either, and a pupil-teacher ratio of 40:1 was commonplace. When St. Oliver’s school opened, St Oliver’s church did not yet exist- it opened three years later in 1978. In those intervening years many a pupil gazed out of a classroom window at the cranes and heavy machinery on the construction site as the church took shape.

First communions were held in the school hall until the church opened. In the first few years some classrooms remained unused; passing pupils would peek into pristine vacant rooms where tables and chairs were covered in plastic.

However, by around 1980 the school had run out of space, and the “crying room” in St. Oliver’s Church was being used as a classroom.

In the initial few decades of its existence, the school had no perimeter fencing, with pupils free to roam far and wide at break times - whether up and around Belcourt or the old Blackcastle shopping centre, the tennis courts, St Mary’s Park, or even as far as the Slane Road.

Most pupils went home for lunch, and many even went home for the 11am break as well.

At that time, it was common for mothers to work in the home, while fathers, many employed in the town, returned home at lunchtime for their “dinner in the middle of the day,” like the ordinary people of Ireland did in the 1970s. There was also a milk scheme for many years where cartons of milk with a straw attached were delivered to the school at lunchtime.

Parental interaction with the school was vastly different from today- there were no parent-teacher meetings, no parents’ association, and most pupils made their way to and from school on their own. Another first for St Oliver’s was the introduction of a school uniform a few years after its opening. No other school in town had a uniform at the time, and the signature blue colours that were part of the first uniform remain a part of the uniform today.

Music and drama were prominent from the very beginning, with productions such as Oklahoma, Oliver Twist, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat staged in the CYMS hall or the Community Centre.

Sport was integral to the school’s ethos, particularly swimming at the old pool behind Pairc Tailteann, athletics, football, and hurling. Annual sports days and prize giving were highlights of the school year. Simonstown Gaels quickly formed an alliance with the school when some of its founding members installed goalposts on what is now the OMP pitch.

St Oliver’s is the most successful school in the county in terms of Cumann na mBunscol football titles, though in the early years it was only the boys who played football while the girls practised their sewing!

Another innovation in the early 1980s was the introduction of a “7th class” for pupils who were not quite ready to make the big step to secondary school particularly as most children started school at the age of four. St Oliver’s followed the example of its near neighbour, St Paul’s, in offering a 7th class for a few years until the Department of Education ceased funding for it.

St Oliver’s has been at the centre of the community of north Navan for the last 50 years; it will be interesting to see what happens in the next five decades and look back again when it celebrates its centenary in 2075.