St. Brendan’s NS opened its doors in 1985 and is a much-loved hub of education and activity in the area ever since. We are a co-educational, mainstream school catering for classes from Junior Infants to Sixth, with two special classes for pupils with ASD. Catholic in ethos, St. Brendan’s has always been a multicultural learning community, where we foster an atmosphere of inclusion, respect and tolerance.

Located in Cartron, a housing estate on the edge of Sligo Town, we are fortunate to be overlooking Sligo Bay and Port as it stretches out into the Atlantic, under the shadow of two of Ireland’s most majestic and mythical mountains, Knocknarea and Benbulben. The views from our playground are spectacular!

St. Brendan’s is smaller than most town schools enabling us to provide a personal and friendly service to our pupils and their families. Our ethos is one of positivity and encouragement. Our dynamic and caring staff takes a personal interest in every pupil and values the diversity of skills and talents that our children display. We aim to be a thriving, forward-thinking and energetic school.

Throughout 2019 and into 2020, we have undertaken a major refurbishment and extension scheme which has greatly enhanced and updated the school building. These works are finally completed and we look forward to having a modern, bright, well-equipped and spacious learning environment suitable for 21st century education.

You will see from our mission statement and beliefs, that we try to ensure that every pupil, regardless of social, cultural or academic background, is welcomed, respected and cherished equally. We believe that children achieve their full potential in a happy, exciting and stimulating atmosphere where they feel encouraged and motivated to learn successfully.

The aims of the Primary School Curriculum (1999) are central to our efforts:

• to enable the child to live a full life as a child and to realise his or her
  potential as a unique individual
• to enable the child to develop as a social being through living and
  cooperating with others and so contribute to the good of society
• to prepare the child for further education and lifelong learning.

You will see from this website that we provide a wide variety of curricular and extra-curricular experiences. Our teachers go the extra mile to ensure that the teaching methodologies used and breadth of experiences provided mean that every child regardless of learning style or background is given the best possible
opportunity to achieve these broad aims.

To ensure a culturally rich educational experience, we organise trips to the theatre, school tours and historical visits have performed numerous shows/musicals and have introduced Music Generation classes to every age group in the school.

With health and wellbeing to the forefront of our minds, we organise afterschool and lunchtime sports such as gymnastics, badminton, basketball, table-tennis, take part in whole-school exercise initiatives, welcome outside coaches from local GAA, soccer, rugby and other clubs and have introduced whole school mental health programmes such as Friends for Life and Weaving Wellbeing.

To encourage play and social interaction, we have lego and craft clubs, buddy initiatives between junior and senior classes, station teaching, friendship programmes and a purpose-built playground.

With the Green School and Active Flag initiatives, computer programming and robotics skills development, access to interactive boards, laptops and tablets, there are many exciting developments on-going throughout the school that contribute to the fulfilling educational experience that we hope each child gets to experience with us here in St. Brendan’s NS.

In the last few years, we have welcomed the addition of an ASD unit to our school community, adding to our already considerable expertise in Special Educational Needs. We are delighted at how our whole school community has welcomed and embraced our pupils with autism into the life of the school and are very proud of
the many great achievements they have made along the way Uniquely, we have an Afterschool service on the premises, allowing pupils to stay in school until 6.30pm each evening. There is supervised homework, play and
food in a safe, structured and well-staffed environment.

It is our wish that all our children and their families will benefit in every way from their time here in St Brendan’s. We hope this website gives you an insight into our busy school community and, of course, we are always delighted to greet visitors in person to meet our pupils and staff and provide whatever help, advice
or assistance we can.

Marie Hurley, Principal.