History - St Buites NS

School History

Scoil Naomh Buithe is at least the fourth school which has been set up around the crossroads. The location of the first is not entirely clear, but it had 68 boys and 36 girls on roll in 1830.

Tenure School in the 1930s

In January 1833 Fr. Torris PP applied to the Board of Education for aid to build a new school on a site on church grounds. The proposed school was to cater for 80 boys and 50 girls and it would cost £157. Following the school's move sometime before 1912 the old building served as a teacher's residence and it underwent a number of refurbishments. In 1962 it was sold back to the parish and is now the curate's residence.

Pupils of Tenure School 1947

Tenure School 1984

By 1912 the "new" school was operational across the road from its predecessor. It was situated in the triangle of land between the Priestown Road and the Paddock Road and is now a private residence. In January 1950 Fr. Ward recorded that there were 65 pupils on the rolls. In 1954 Fr. Bennett started a fundraising campaign for another new sTchool. Five years later a one acre site was purchased at a cost of £225 and in 1962 S. Kerr and Sons, Ardee, were appointed to build a new two roomed school at a cost of £8,000. The building was officially opened and blessed by most Rev. Dr. Conway on 18th April 1963. It then had 59 pupils on roll. As the numbers increased a prefab was added to the right of the school. When a second prefab was need in 1983 it was decided to extend the school.

In 1986 a further two classrooms and a PE hall were added to the school. Over the course of the next year the two original classrooms were completely refurbished. The new buildings were officially opened by Séamus Kirk TD in October 1987 and blessed by Bishop James Lennon. The extension had cost over £200,000 built with a local contribution in excess of £20,000.

Aerial Photo of School circa 2000

In 1994 there were 112 pupils on roll in the school. This fell back to 90 by the year 2000, but in 2002 the number of pupils began to increase sharply and the need for yet another extension became evident. Permission for a four-classroom extension and a larger PE hall was granted by the Department in 2006 and planning work began. This continued over a number of years until Sept 2010 when the Department of Education and Skills shelved plans for an extension and granted permission to begin architectural planning for a new eight-teacher school to cater for the 192 pupils then on roll. This new school is being built on a greenfield part of the school site. Planning took longer than expected for a number of reasons but we sre finally ready to begin work on what will be at least the fifth school in Tenure (See "About Us - New School" for up to date information).

Over the past decade we have had to use our PE hall as a classroom and we have also needed to add three prefabricated classrooms and two prefabricated learning support rooms. We are very much looking forward to moving into our new school in September 2016.

Scoil Naomh Buithe September 2015