Cork school may have to rent facilities to offer PE classes

A CORK secondary school principal has said his school is struggling to facilitate physical education (PE) as a Leaving Certificate subject due to a lack of facilities.

Coláiste Éamann Rís is among the 5% of secondary schools in Ireland that do not currently have a PE hall.

The Department of Education told The Echo it will look at rectifying this problem, but school principal Aaron Wolfe said that their timeline is too far out.

“5% of us have no facilities, and they’re saying that they’ll look at it in 2026,” he said.

Mr Wolfe said it will likely take a long time for the facilities to be approved and built. Despite this, the school is looking to facilitate PE as an exam subject.

The school is looking at offering a taster programme for transition year students next year.

Renting

Mr Wolfe said they are going to have to look at renting facilities.

“We are one of the largest schools on the southside of the city, and the size of our hall does not correspond to the size of the school,” he said.

Mr Wolfe said the department has allowed it to plan for a PE hall, saying: “We can get an architect to say ‘this is where it’s going’, but we won’t be given any money.”

Coláiste Éamann Rís timetables two hours a week of PE per class, which is above average because Mr Wolfe said they recognise the importance of physical activity, but they are often unable to use their pitch because it gets waterlogged.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education told The Echo: “Almost 95% of the post-primary schools that made 2020 Annual Schools Returns have indicated to the department that they either have a PE hall, access to a nearby PE hall, or a project in train that will deliver a new PE hall.”

Invested

They added that since 2020, the Department of Education has invested in the region of €3.5bn in schools throughout the country, and “a future strengthened focus on refurbishment of existing school stock” will have different strands and will include a PE build and modernisation programme.

“However, the main focus of the department’s capital funding over the last decade and for the coming period is on provision of critical additional capacity to cater for increasing demographics and children with special education needs.

“The Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform will be engaging with departments on NDP allocations for the period 2026 to 2028 over the coming months, with allocation decisions expected during the first half of 2024.”

Students have been able to take PE as a Leaving Certificate subject in some schools since 2018.

Lucky

Conor Bowen, a PE and math teacher at Edmund Rice College Carrigaline, has been teaching the subject for two years.

“We’re lucky, we have massive facilities, a big PE hall and a gym upstairs,” he said.

Outlining details of the syllabus, he said that students learn about topics such as the science behind coaching, how to become a high-performance athlete, gender inequality and drugs in sport for a written exam worth 50% of their grade.

Two projects make up the remainder of the marks, the first of which sees students choose a sport and assess their performance, put together a six- to eight-week training plan to try and improve, then assess themselves again after this training.

The project is assessed by a write-up and a video of their plan and is marked based off their training plan rather than their ability at that sport.

A performance assessment is worth 30% of the marks, which sees students make an eight-minute video project showcasing their best performance in a certain sport. Mr Bowen said: “There are some teething problems with this one as they have to do it in school — I have international-level soccer players who can’t use that footage.”