A look back to Leaving Cert class of 53 years ago

By Tom Gillespie

THE forced changes imposed on sitting the Leaving Certificate examination because of Covid has caused controversy across the educational system.

Back when I sat the dreaded examination in St. Gerald’s College in Castlebar in June 1968, we were looking forward to completing our education and escaping from the clutches of the De La Salle Brothers who, along with a handful of lay teachers, were our tutors for the previous five years.

The Leaving Cert class was split in two - the As and the Bs. Needless to stay I was in the B section while the ‘brighter’ pupils were in the A grouping.

One of the star performers in the A class was the former Fine Gael (FG) politician Enda Kenny, who went on to attain the highest political position in Ireland, serving as Taoiseach from 2011 to 2017.

He was a TD for Mayo West from 1975 to 1997 and for Mayo from 1997 to 2020.

Kenny led FG to a historic victory at the 2011 general election, his party becoming the largest in the state for the first time, forming a coalition government with the Labour Party on March 9, 2011. He subsequently became the first Fine Gael member to be elected Taoiseach for a second consecutive term on May 6, 2016, after two months of negotiations following the 2016 election, forming a Fine Gael-led minority government.

He became the longest-serving Fine Gael Taoiseach in April 2017.

Kenny stepped down as leader of FG in June 2017 and announced he would resign as Taoiseach once a new leader was chosen in early June. Then Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar was elected to succeed him as party leader.

In November 2017, Kenny announced he would not contest the following general election.

Enda received his primary education at Derrycoosh National School where the master was John Egan from Newport Road, Castlebar. When he completed his Primary Certificate examination in sixth class he commenced secondary school in St. Gerald’s College.

For our Leaving Cert, we sat several papers including Irish, English, French, Latin, maths, science, geography and history. The ‘foreign’ languages were not my forte despite the efforts of French teacher Joe Gilmartin and Latin master John Nally.

I could not get my head around these subjects and I didn't bother to even sit the papers.

Thankfully, I passed the Leaving and two months later I joined my father and uncles in The Connaught Telegraph where I spent the next 46 years until my retirement in April 2014.

Preparation for the Leaving was intense and the De La Salle brothers laid on compulsory study sessions several evenings each week from five to seven o’clock in the college.

Our maths teacher, Hugh McTigue from Kiltimagh, was an excellent professional as were Peter Filan from Bohola and Frank Molloy from Claremorris. The college, of course, was on Chapel Street while the new college at Blackfort opened in 1971.

St. Gerald’s College is a voluntary Catholic secondary school established by the De La Salle Brothers in 1908.

The college is under the trusteeship of the Le Chéile Schools Trust. The mission of their Lasallian centre is to give a human and Christian education to the young, with special concern for the disadvantaged.

According to the college history, St. Gerald, also known as Gerald of Mayo, was in fact an Englishman who became a monk under St. Colman of Lindisfarne in the 7th century. Colman founded a monastery of mixed nationalities on Inisboffin.

Following a disagreement, the English monks transferred to the mainland and founded Mayo Abbey, which as a result was often referred to as ‘Mayo of the Saxons’.

St. Gerald became abbot, probably the first, of this foundation. He died in 727 and his feast day is March 13.

The De La Salle Brothers were founded in Rheims, France, by St. John Baptist De La Salle in the middle of the 17th century to provide free education for the children of the poor. They quickly spread throughout France and to other countries.

The brothers came to Castlebar in 1888 and opened St. Patrick’s National School to 189 pupils at Chapel Street. This was the Order's fourth establishment in Ireland, being preceded only by Castletown, Co. Laois, Kildare town and Waterford city, in that order.

St. Gerald’s De La Salle college was opened in 1909. Twenty-four boys were enrolled in that first year.

The original college was in what is now St. Gerald’s Parish Centre, Chapel Street.

In September 1971, the present college on Newport Road opened under the headmastership of Br. Vincent Hanley. The recent extension was opened in September 1999.

There are over 600 boys in the college at present. The first lay principal of the college was appointed in 2000.