D14 Primary Schools - Holy Cross/Our Lady's Clonskeagh/Ardtona/Nortre Dame

Deekelly

Hi,
I'm hoping someone can share some feedback on any of the above schools or others in the area? We recently bought a house on Lower Churchtown Rd & I'm now in a panic trying to choose a school for our daughter who's due to start junior infants this Sept. I went to open days in Holy Cross & Our Lady's Clonskeagh. Both seemed good enough, although class sizes seem very small in Our Lady's. Usually a good thing but seem strangely small so wondering if there's a reason for this?
As I said any feedback at all on any junior schools in the area (Churchtown, Dundrum, Rathfarnham) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

homer911

It may be a bit late for Taney National School, but worth a try. Its nominally CoI, but a lot of Catholic kids attend and the school is very supportive of Catholic priests coming in to run Holy Communion classes etc

Excellent primary school in my opinion - if a school is too easy to get into, there is probably a reason!

Their website seems to be going through some reconstruction..

http://www.taneyschool.ie/

Deekelly

Thanks homer911. I did ring Taney but was told I had no chance basically. Had heard good things about it. What would be your second choice??
Thanks.

SerialComplaint

I heard some not-so-good stories about Holy Cross about 3-4 years ago from 2 independent sources - lots of young teachers having difficulty maintaining control apparently. Having said that, small class sizes must be a huge advantage.

I've heard good things about Taney too - no uniform there. If you'd think about travelling up to Ballinteer (5 mins from Dundrum), you have a few other options - Scoil Naithi (GaelScoil), Our Ladys, St Attractas.

Doug89

I went to Our Lady's Clonskeigh from 1993-6 (moved to Rathfarnham house and moved school) from what I experienced of it and what I've heard since it's a very good school. Reasons for tiny class sizes (there were 8 of us in junior infants...) is due to a huge depopulation of the area, there's just no kids around.

A nice school with a good ethos, a good sized yard and with such great student:teacher ratios I think it's a win.

actua11

Worked in Our Lady's Grove for a short time as a class assistant. Seemed to be a good atmosphere in the place, classes were well structured/mangaged. (As for class sizes, they did/still do use temporary portacabins for classes so that may have limited class sizes recently enough, but I did see some re-development work down there recently so I'm definitely open to correction on this)

Our Lady's in Ballinteer was also mentioned. It is always spoken of very highly so I'd throw that out as another option.

garbanzo

Welcome to Churchtown OP. I have two daughters in Notre Dame junior school and can't fault it. Small classes, good facilities and teachers.

alie

Loreto national , grange road, you might have to queue for a place