A school well known as a rugby nursery in this country…
The Cistercian College in Roscrea, Co Tipperary has announced that it will close in June 2017, after 112 years of operations.
The school will finish classes for the majority of its students following the Leaving Cert and Junior exams this June.
The college, a fee-paying, all boys school, cited a significant fall in student numbers as the reason for its closure.
According to a letter distributed to parents from Dom Richard Purcell, the school will consider continuing the Junior and Leaving Cert cycles for the current second-year and fifth-year pupils if there’s enough demand.
“This is a very sad day for the staff, the students and their families, the many thousands of past pupils and of course the monks of Mount St Joseph Abbey. The decision to close was an extremely difficult one for the community to make,” said Dom Richard Purcell, Abbot of Mount St Joseph Abbey.
“The school has witnessed a 45% drop in enrolment in the past 10 years with just nine first-year students enrolled for September 2017.
“Clearly this is unsustainable and the school is simply no longer financially viable. We were sadly left with no option but to conduct what we anticipate will be a phased closure of the school over the next 16 months,” Dom Richard added.
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