SCHOOLS’ EXCELLENCE FUND

The ‘Schools’ Excellence Fund’ is a Department run initiative where primary and post-primary schools work together to develop excellence in a particular area of school life.

Thomond Primary School has been clustered together with Corpus Christi and Thomond Community College to develop excellence in subject areas of STEM. Through this project we are having regular consultations with our neighbouring schools to help the children transition more smoothly from 6th class to first year. As such, our current 6th class is the focus of our project but the Fund has provided opportunities for the whole school.

In the last year we have engaged in programmes developing coding skills with the NCCA, worked in house on programming and computational skills through Scratch and teachers have up-skilled themselves using robotics and Lego WeDo kits. We have also developed partnerships with Mary Immaculate College and Analog Devices. This year we are extending that to working with and learning from professionals in the University of Limerick as well as incorporating a new type of robot called ‘Spheros’.

In June we were very proud to be awarded our Discover Primary Science and Maths Plaque for all our accomplishments in these areas. Following on from this we are now working towards achieving our ‘Badge of Excellence’ to accompany this plaque. Watch this space!