The securing of Seamount College’s future will now offer a solution to south Galway’s secondary school accommodation shortage, according to RESCUE, the umbrella group established to campaign for the retention of secondary education in Kinvara.
RESCUE has learned from the Department of Education and Science that a lease agreement, to run for a 10 year period, is now in place between the group and the Mercy Order. The group has welcomed this agreement and has thanked both parties for their hard work and commitment in bringing it to fruition.
Last September, the school’s educational capacity increased considerably with incorporation of the large convent building, Seamount House, into the school campus. RESCUE believes that this along with the security of the lease agreement means that Seamount College is ideally placed to offer an immediate solution to the crisis in school places in south Galway. The urgent need for school places was reflected in the huge turnout at the college’s information evening for prospective new students on February 9.
A spokesperson for RESCUE said this week that “parents, teachers, and the wider community welcome the securing of Seamount College’s future. We all look forward to the day when it opens its doors to a co-ed intake and boys from the area will, at last, be able to attend their local secondary school”.
RESCUE has been campaigning tirelessly to save Seamount College. In spring 2007, the group identified a looming educational crisis in south Galway. They highlighted the fact that rapid population growth in the area - 30 per cent growth from 2001-2006 - would mean that more than 2,500 students would require secondary education in south Galway/north Clare by 2011 and that there were only 1,700 places available.
According to a statement from RESCUE a report produced in 2007 by the Department’s Commission on Schools Accommodation acknowledged that there was an immediate need for further secondary school places in south Galway. It recommended that “a co-educational post-primary school for [around] 800 students should be provided” in Kinvara, with capacity to accept some students from the Oranmore/Clarinbridge area.
