Educate D8

Educate D8 is a community group representing families in Dublin 8. We have two main aims. The first is to secure the establishment of a new secondary school for our area. The second is to gain access to the consultation process on ethos and patronage.

For generations, our area has experienced under-investment in secondary education. As is shown by the Department of Education’s own studies, our local secondary schools can accommodate only about half of the children who live here. As a result, some recent groups of 6th-class students have been dispersed to as many as 14 different secondary schools. In contrast, in some other areas that have been awarded new schools in recent years such as Dublin 6-Clonskeagh and Booterstown-Blackrock, there is capacity for two or even three times the number of primary-school students in the planning area.

Our second aim is to gain access to the consultation process on ethos and patronage that is attached to newly-established schools. This is currently the only way that communities can have a say in the ethos of their local secondary school—as the Minister for Education recently confirmed, no Catholic secondary schools have changed ethos from Catholic to inter- or multi-denominational since 2000. Access to consultation on ethos is especially important in Dublin 8 because, although 62% of people in our area are not Catholic, 4 of our 5 secondary schools are Catholic and we have no inter- or multi-denominational school.

The Minister for Education recently stated that since 2000, more than 100 new secondary schools have been established in Ireland, of which 90 are multi-denominational. All we are asking for is to be treated equally.

To join our campaign, please subscribe to this page and join our WhatsApp group (link available once subsribed).