Virginia National School extension goes to tender

Seamus Enright


The long-awaited 10 classroom extension at St. Mary’s National School, Virginia has gone to tender, with the closing date for parties to express interest later this month. It adds to the hope that upgrade of school accommodation for its 389 pupils and 20 teachers may at last begin sometime in the new year.
The 10 classroom extension is to the rear of the school, from the existing four-classroom wing. It will include support accommodation which contains a library, staffroom, general resource and special education classrooms.
Construction is to take place in three main phases as the existing school will remain operational.
It follows on from the news in June of this year, as the school raised their third Green Flag, they had also secured the support of the Department of Education to progress with the works.
Pupils at St Mary’s have, in recent years, been educated between 11 portacabins on site, at an estimated rental cost of over €80,000 per year.
St. Mary’s National School, Virginia applied for their first extension in April, 2004, and were on waiting lists for the past nine-years. Before getting the go-ahead the project suffered a number of set-backs, including seeing the project taken off the Department’s Building Programme in March 2012 despite the fact that considerable progress had been made in planning and design work following the appointment of a Design Team in February 2010.
There remains five primary schools in the Virginia feeder area, and enrolment at primary level have shown large increases over the past decade.