St Conleth's College

St. Conleth's College is a fee-paying, co-educational Catholic school in Dublin, Ireland, founded in 1939, by Bernard Sheppard, who ran the school from 16 Clyde Road until, due to demand, the school was upgraded to the larger premises at 28 Clyde Road.

St. Conleth's initially opened on the day Germany declared war on Poland. The sons of both the Polish and German ambassadors to Ireland attended St. Conleth's together on that day.

Kevin D. Kelleher (1921 - 2016),^[1] former international rugby referee,^[2] was the headmaster of the school for over 46 years. Ann Sheppard (the daughter of Bernard Sheppard and step-daughter of Kevin Kelleher) was school principal from 1988–2001 and is now unitary manager of the junior and senior schools. In recent years she has overseen multiple improvements to the facilities which St. Conleth’s provides for its students. Donal O'Doulaing is the current principal of the secondary school.

Tony Kilcumins is the principal of the junior school, which was recently developed to include junior and senior infants allowing Conlethian boys and girls to study at St Conleth's from Junior Infants until their Leaving Certificate.

The school was named after St. Conleth, a sixth-century Irish monk who was a moulder of precious metals and whose feast day is the 4th of May. The senior school has about 280 pupils and is fully co-educational. It has a teaching staff of 25. It has grown steadily since it opened and the school building at 28 Clyde Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, is now significantly different from its original state.

The Millennium extension saw the addition of a half court school hall, canteen and additional classrooms as well as a computer lab and resurfacing of playing facilities. In 2009 the school underwent reconstruction again, resulting in an additional floor and re-modelling of the interior.

In 2011 a bequest to The National Library of Wales made by an ex-St. Conleth's teacher highlighted the teacher's Nazi past.^[3] Louis Feutren, who taught for 30 years at St. Conleth's until the mid 1980s, was revealed to have been a Nazi collaborator in occupied France and member of the Waffen SS.

Academics

The school topped the fee-paying schools league table in 2003.^[4] However, St. Conleth's academic excellence is seen more by its ethos, which aims to develop students to the maximum of their potential. Similarly, due to its relatively small size St. Conleth's has suffered recently on league table due to students who have chosen to study abroad being represented as non-achievers.

Subjects offered by the school for the Leaving Certificate include but are not limited to: Maths, English, Irish, French, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Business, Economics, Spanish, Geography, Classical Studies, Latin, History, Applied Mathematics and Art.

Sport and debating

Rugby is considered the primary sport of the school and both a junior and senior cup team represent the school in section C.

St. Conleth's has always had a strong debating tradition, which can be seen in the minutes of the school's Literary and Debating Society dating back to the 1940s. Growing on this tradition, the 2000s have seen St Conleth's have no fewer than four Irish Worlds Schools representatives, a decade that culminated in the 2008 victory in the Denny's All Ireland Schools Debating Championship, followed in close succession by victories in the Trinity College Schools Mace and the University College Dublin School's Mace. As of 2010, St. Conleth's has begun hosting an annual Junior Mace Debating competition.

References

External links

• School's website
• Past Pupil's Website