There is fury and bewilderment among staff at a well-known and highly regarded Dublin city school over news that it will convert from an English medium school to a Gaelcholáiste from 2026.
Staff at Synge Street CBS have told RTÉ News of their shock and anger at the fact that the news was broken to them just hours before it was publicly announced by the school’s trustees and Minister for Education Norma Foley on Wednesday.
The principal of Synge Street was informed on Tuesday afternoon that the DEIS school would begin a transition in 2026 from a boys only English medium school to a co-educational Gaelcholáiste.
She was left to break the news to staff at a hastily convened meeting on Tuesday evening, in advance of statements issued by the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST) and the Minister for Education the following morning.
Some, who share the distress at the way school staff were informed and the speed of the move, are positive about the actual change.
“We all knew change was coming, but the speed of the announcement did come as a shock.” But this person added: “But it is a brilliant move and it will be a huge success.”
Explaining the late breaking of the news to staff and the school community, ERST said it was caused by the Department of Education.
RTÉ News understands that ERST was told on Tuesday afternoon that approval had been granted and that Minister Foley would announce the decision to Irish language TV station TG4 at an event at lunchtime on Wednesday. ERST has told RTÉ News that it informed the school principal “straightaway”.
“And then ERST issued its statement at 11am on Wednesday and the Department issued its statement in response,” it said in a statement.
Since Tuesday staff at the school have been reeling from the news. For some, it means they must leave the school as they do not have the language skills required to teach through the medium of Irish.
One staff member described it as like being in mourning.
“No one was expecting this announcement,” another told RTÉ News.
“The shock comes at the fact that we were informed just the evening before.”
The transition will begin in September 2026 with that year’s first year intake. It will be completed six years later when that same year reach sixth year.
The school’s 30 teachers have been told that anyone who wishes to upskill in order to be able to teach through Irish will be supported.
Staff have also disputed an assertion in a statement from the trust that the decision was reached “following a consultation process with the school community”. Both staff and a parent at the school have said there was no meaningful consultation.
“We are gobsmacked,” one school source said.
Staff and others connected to the school are concerned about the impact the decision to become an Irish medium school will have on local families traditionally served by Synge Street. These include lower income families who live in the inner city, and also immigrant families who send their both first and second generation boys to the school.
They fear the change will drive these families away.
Synge Street school has educated boys from families across the city for generations. Founded in 1864 as part of a wider move by the Christian Brothers to expand Catholic education in the city, especially for poor boys, the disadvantaged school has been famed in recent decades for its unparalleled success at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition.
In 2022 it became the first to win the competition’s top prize on four occasions, and no school has beaten that record.
‘Syngers’ is also renowned for its roll call of illustrious past pupils, which includes writers, broadcasters, politicians and artists.
However in recent decades the school has been suffering a terminal decline, caused initially by demographic change in the inner city as families moved out to suburbs with modern new schools nearby.
In more recent times Synge Street has lost out as a growing number of families turn their backs on single sex education in favour of co-ed.
It is the last of a number of old Catholic Dublin 8 schools to become co-educational.
Successive leaders at Synge Street have known that the school had to change in order to survive and they have supported and planned for that change.
Sitting in the principal’s office in the school many years ago, former principal Dr Michael Minnock gave private expression to his frustration at the lack of change.
“We are a modern capital city, but where is our Lycée?”, he asked me. (A Lycée is the French model of school that provides free, non-religious, state education to allcomers.)
Yesterday evening over the phone I reminded him of his remarks. Now retired, he told RTÉ News “the inner city needs one large secondary school and the [Synge St] site is one of the most impressive. This change ought to be welcomed, despite the short time-frame for its implementation”.
An emblem of that need for change is a number of parent groups who have been campaigning vociferously in recent years for co-educational post primary school provision in the Dublin 8 area.
They include a group that has campaigned over the past three years for a Gaelcholáiste.
The Gaelcholáiste 2,4,6,8 Group points out that there are five Gaelscoileanna in these postal areas, but sixth class children leaving those schools currently have no Irish medium school that they can progress into.
The group learned about Synge Street’s imminent transformation from the media on Wednesday. Although they have questions, they have welcomed it.
“There is a lot of relief,” Chairperson Julian de Spáinn said. “Parents are very happy because they can now see a way forward for their children’s educational future through Irish.”
“They started that journey [in primary] and they want to continue that in their own school area.
“Parents have a lot of questions. It is very important to us that it will be lán-gaeilge (fully immersive) from the start. How that comes about will be between the patron and the department.”
In 2017 Synge Street’s main feeder primary school, Bunscoil Synge, introduced an Irish medium stream in 2017. Since then, and as a direct result, its enrolment has grown by 63%.
Its big brother beside it, Synge Street senior, is among the last of this area’s old traditional schools to modernise. It is not before time.
While a growing number of parents in this increasingly gentrified area have been crying out for change, Synge Street has been dying on its feet, its enrolment languishing at just under 300 boys.
But the suddenness of this week’s announcement, its unseemly haste, has deeply hurt this school community, and some are asking; why was it done in this unnecessarily brutal way?
