227 entries for Church Inspections

This conflicts with the Visitation Report for 1955, which stated that the financial position of Artane was very satisfactory: On the 31st December, 1954 the Surplus Income from the School Account was £4,645 ... and from the House Account £12,113 ... On both accounts there was a Credit Balance at the end of the year of £36,203 to carry on to the 1955 accounts. There is a sum of £30,000 invested in the Building Fund.

At this time, there was to the credit of the Institution £30,000 in the Congregation’s account. Between 1944 and 1956, the sum of over £17,500 was paid into the fund. Around this time, Artane paid back a long-standing debt of £8,800 to the building fund. The Community paid Visitation Dues of £3,000 in 1955.

A Visitation Report in 1947, while describing the boys as ‘well fed and very well clothed’, recommended that boys should be allowed to wash and change after working in the farm. However, 10 years later, in 1957, the Visitor commented that the boys came in to meals in a filthy condition and stayed in their dirty and often wet clothes all day.

The 1943 Visitation Report noted: The Toilets for the boys are not modern in any sense. They are of the dry kind and buckets are used and changed daily. There is no running water in the urinals; they must be washed out every day.

This primitive system remained in use until 1950, when the Visitation Report for that year stated: ‘The sanitary block completed by Br Tyce meets a long-standing want’.

Facilities for the boys were poor. There was no indoor recreation hall, as identified by the Visitor in 1945 and again in 1956: ‘The lack of a play-hall space is a crying need’. Similar comments were made in subsequent reports, but nothing was done until 1965 when an enclosed play shelter was erected, with recreation rooms for use during the winter. The financial position of the Institution was good during the 1950s, but the Visitation Reports reveal a marked reluctance to spend money on the Institution because of uncertainty as to its future as an industrial school.

It is clear from the section dealing with accommodation in Artane that the classrooms provided were poor, even by the standards of the time. Successive Visitation Reports decried the dilapidated and unsuitable condition of these buildings that had been condemned in the 1930s. As early as 1934, the Visitor commented: The Buildings are in good repair on the whole, but the class-rooms are said to be unsafe; they will hold until the findings of the Commission now in session will determine the school accommodation required.

The Visitation Reports are complimentary of the standard of primary school education in Artane throughout the years, and frequently note that it is on a par with, if not better than, the standard in ordinary day schools. The Visitors were not alone in their praise. It is noted again and again in the Visitation Reports that the Department of Education School Inspector marked the standard of teaching as either efficient or highly efficient.

Br Wiatt held the position of Principal from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. He was praised in many Visitation Reports for the well-organised manner in which he ran the School.

The Visitation Report in November 1938 noted that the School was well organised and the classes of reasonable size. The Visitor remarked that the numbers of boys in classes was in fact lower than in ordinary schools. There was a wide divergence in ages amongst children, particularly in the lowest class, because many children who were admitted to Artane had little or no education before being sent there. In the 1930s and 1940s, when numbers in the School rose to over 800, there were up to 24 teachers engaged in teaching classes, from infants through to 6th standard. The teaching staff was mostly made up of Brothers. By the mid-1950s, the number had reduced to 16 classes with 14 teachers, due to falling numbers.

By 1957, there were 526 boys in the Institution, a drop of over 200 in two years. The Visitation Report that year noted that the School was overstaffed, with 12 teachers, and class sizes were well below average. Numbers continued to drop steadily in the Institution into the 1960s and, by 1968, there were 280 boys in the School.

The same year, a secondary top school was formed in the School, although the Visitor opined in his Visitation Report of 1965 that a technical top might have been more appropriate. The School had opted for the secondary top, as there were no metal or woodwork teachers available.

Two classes were formed from amongst those who had passed their Primary Certificate, and the first tranche of boys from Artane prepared to sit their Intermediate Certificate in 1966. However, it was also the last time a boy from Artane Industrial School would sit this examination. The Visitation Report of December 1966 noted that the class had been discontinued because of Department regulations. Only eight boys had passed the examination that year. Instead, a class for boys who wished to join the catering industry was set up under the supervision of the CERT84 organisation. It was hoped that the more promising boys could continue their education in the local secondary schools, although the Committee has seen no evidence that this ever occurred.

The School followed the National School programme, and the boys were eligible to sit the Primary Certificate examination. Many of the Visitation Reports point to the high success rate of the boys who sat this examination, but these figures need to be examined against the total number of boys in 6th standard. In some years, up to 50% of the boys in 6th standard in the primary school were not presented for this examination, which made the very high pass rate for those who did sit for it less significant.

The standard of education for the boys engaged in trades during the day was criticised by a number of Visitors. The first hint of disapproval appeared in the Visitation Report of 1947, in which the Visitor noted that the few hours devoted to school work in the evening lacked drive and efficiency. In 1952, the Visitor queried in his report the wisdom of taking the boys out of primary school at the age of 14, regardless of whether they had reached the 6th standard.