Time to Reflect and Recharge
It is high summer here in Clongowes: sunlight streams through the windows and the classrooms and galleries lie silent. Yet this silence masks the activity taking place in the examination centres where the boys of Rhetoric and Grammar are tackling the Leaving and Junior Certificate examinations.
For the sixth year boys this rite of passage is their last action in the school (although hopefully not their last presence), while the third years will return in the autumn to enter Transition Year after which they in turn will become senior cycle students.
Meanwhile their predecessors in that year of transition are setting out this week on the annual Duck Push, the final event in a year of raising money for Crumlin Children’s Hospital. Finally, in July, students from Poetry will welcome some very special visitors to Clongowes to take part in the annual and very rewarding Special Children’s’ Holiday.
Such is the nature of life in Clongowes as we conclude our 204th academic year and it was ever thus. The school was founded in 1814 to provide excellence in education and leaders in society, and the quality of the Rhetoric boys who are about to leave is testament to its on-going success.
As we head into what is finally beginning to look like summer we ask for your prayers for the pupils and staff in our care as well as those who are about to depart. We invoke God’s blessing on the school, hope that all of you have a wonderful summer and look forward continuing the good work when we reconvene at the end of August.
Declan O’Keeffe, Head of Communications