Our annual Open Day this year is on Saturday 28th September, and all prospective pupils and their parents are very welcome. No advance booking is needed: just turn up and you will be looked after (pupils will guide visitors from the car parks to the reception point). Everything starts at 10am: visitors are advised to […]
We are again taking part in the great annual event which is Culture Night, which this year is on the evening on Friday 20th September. As before, visitors to the College will have the chance to have an architectural and historical tour and talk, which will be given by the Sub-Warden, Julian Girdham. Visitors are […]
The latest edition of the pupil magazine The Submarine, or rather, given the time of the year, The Summerine, has just been published in school in paper form, and now can be read online here, or in flippable form on SCC English here (click for closer view and navigation, click on the arrows to move through […]
Tuesday evening saw the 26th annual TY English Evening, the longest-established Transition Year event in the school’s calendar. It was presented by the Head of Department, the Sub-Warden, who welcomed his predecessor, Mr John Fanagan, as the guest speaker. He also remembered with fondness Professor Terry Dolan, who died recently, and who for so long […]
Yesterday evening in the Big Schoolroom Mr McCarthy and Ms Maybury presented the annual TY awards. Mr McCarthy, shortly to step down as TY co-ordinator after 8 years, reviewed the impressive range of activities Fourth Form have undertaken during the year. He said it was particularly important that pupils grab the opportunities they are presented […]
That lovely late-season annual event, Voices of Poetry, took place on Sunday evening in the Big Schoolroom. It is a fine pause in the maelstrom of the ending of the school year, just before examinations start: listening to great verse in many languages is balm for the soul. Again Mr Swift co-ordinated with his characteristic […]
This evening the annual Public Speaking Competition for Second Form was held again in the Upper Cadogan. In recent years this has highlighted the work of pupils in their Classroom Based Assessments (the oral presentations), which are neatly timed to coincide with this event. There were excellent 2-3 minute presentations from Elys Walker, Kate Higgins […]
We are delighted to present an extraordinary discovery on film. In early 2018 the Sub-Warden, while researching old editions of the school magazine for his book Floreat Columba: 100 years of The Columban magazine, 1879-1979, came across repeated references in the 1930s to ‘Mr Barnardo’s film of the College’. This had apparently been regularly shown […]
FORM PRIZES: congratulations to the following, who have been awarded prizes based on their academic work this year:- SIXTH: Helen Crampton, Georgia Keegan-Wignall, Harry Oke-Osanyintolu, JiWoo Park, Caspar Schulenburg, David White. FIFTH: Camila Garcia Herrera, Oda Michel, Poppy O’Malley, Eliza Somerville, Tania Stokes. FOURTH: Imogen Casey, Sinéad Cleary, Gioia Dönhoff, Oscar Yan. THIRD: Tom Casey, […]
The Warden’s latest thoughts, on racism and diversity: It is very worrying that in the last year or two we have seen a rise in racist attitudes around Europe and in the USA. It is staggering that once again premier league footballers are being subject to racist chants and having bananas thrown at them. This […]
A great man, and great friend both of the English Department and of St Columba’s, left us recently. Professor T.P. Dolan, of the English Department of University College Dublin, more commonly known as ‘Terry’, visited us for over 35 years until recent times. His funeral was held earlier today in Kingscourt, County Cavan, where he […]
UPDATE, APRIL 30th: the event is now SOLD OUT. There is a waiting list here. Over the weekend we released details of a stellar line-up of presenters for our researchED event on Saturday 5th October. This is the organisation’s first-ever event in Dublin, in a year which sees it represented in the UK, Dubai, the USA, […]
The latest edition of ‘The Submarine’, the pupil-edited and -written magazine, has now been published in school (in paper form) and in flippable form on the English site via Issuu (use the arrows to navigate, and click again for a close look). In this edition, there are pieces by Avi Johnston (On Journalism), Vivian Tuite […]
A remarkable aerial view of the College has recently been rediscovered. This was taken long before the drone-age, perhaps in the late 1930s. Such photographs are part of the early Air Corps Glass Plate Negative collection, which covers the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. They appear to have undertaken to aerially photograph Dublin city and surrounds in […]
This evening in one of the world’s great spaces, the Long Room in Trinity College, Dublin, the Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, launched a new exhibition showcasing the impact of the Gwynn family on TCD. The Gwynns were also enormously important in the life of St Columba’s too, and this connection is frequently made in the […]
Our annual Mental Health Awareness Week officially begins today with another full and varied programme of events scheduled – the theme this year being “This is Us”. There are a series of hikes for all age groups (including the one up Kilmashogue Mountain yesterday), visiting speakers (including Tom Tate from Why Mind and Stuart Wilson […]
This morning in Chapel the Sub-Warden talked about the idea of ‘Factfulness’ as promoted by the Hans Rosling. In this post are some links for pupils who are interested. Rosling’s book Factfulness: ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think (co-authors Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund) […]
The Warden has written an article on fee-paying schools for the Sunday Independent ‘School League Tables’ supplement. Here is what he wrote: Parents love a school league table, particularly when it shows their child’s school in a good light. However, I am rather confused by the way the school league tables in Ireland are currently […]
