Huge investment in the future as a new era is set to begin at a Tipperary school

 An exhibition charting the story of the CBS High School Clonmel is currently running at the Tipperary Museum of Hidden History in Clonmel.

This year the High School is marking the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the school.
The exhibition will remain open until  June 7.

The following article is from the exhibition.

As CBS High School Clonmel celebrates its 125th anniversary it stands on the threshold of a new era with an expansion costing in excess of €8 million planned to take place.

The investment will deliver just one of the many necessary expansions undertaken since the school opened for students in 1900, a number of which, including the original building, involved fundraising in the community.
In the first addition to the school, three years later a new two-room science block was provided on a site apart from the main school building.

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The science and woodwork rooms were opened by Bishop Sheehan who referred to the school as “Clonmel’s little University.” Come the thirties however and the progress of the High School necessitated the first expansion of the original edifice with the addition of a two-storey wing to the back of the premises.

At the same time, additional land was required to provide a much-enlarged playing field. By 1961 the school had grown again and had 250 pupils, had a staff of 11 teachers, four brothers, two semi-retired brothers, and five lay teachers.
Saint Peter & Paul’s new primary school opened in 1967 and soon afterward work began on the building of the new High School and the new building opened in 1970.

Gone were the old science lab, adjacent classrooms, and the miserable prefabs that teachers and students endured for so long.
There was, for the first time a comfortable staff room and specialist rooms.

Continued expansion in numbers, however, as a result of Donogh O’Malleys Free Education Act, soon forced the school to convert the specialist rooms into general classrooms.
Almost immediately the staff room was too small and from then teachers of the time have a memory of increasingly overcrowded and cramped conditions.

By 1972 the school population had reached 364. The first year intake was 91 and Brother GP O’Neill was the principal.
Since 1972 the numbers soared to 700 (2000).

With the dawn of a new era in the High School in 1991 it was obvious to all, the pupils, parents, staff, and board of management that a major investment was required to develop the infrastructure of the school.
First lay principal Shay Bannon set about the task with all the stakeholders including the people of Clonmel who also recognised the need for development.

The school’s transformation began in the early nineties and went through to the early 2000s consisting of a multi-million investment.

It involved the creation of a new music room, woodwork room, technology room, demonstration room, language lab, library, new and enlarged computer room, enhanced art room, new PE area, a new career guidance suite, and a spacious staff room.
In the same period, the roof of the original school was repaired and substantial funds were spent on levelling the playing field. Just like the people of Clonmel came together when the original school was built the community was not found wanting during that period.

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Now a much-needed expenditure of over € 8 million will provide a new extension that will set the school community up for the decades to come.

It will consist of a new two-storey building in the car park that will connect with the existing school buildings.
It will provide two science laboratories, a technical room, SET rooms, and a home economics room.
It will also include an extension of the HUB/ASD unit.