About Riverview Educate Together National School
We believe that everyone – that is all children, all families and all staff – have the right to be happy, be safe and be able to learn.
We try to do this in many ways. We pride ourselves on the excitement we hear when we open the school gates every morning. Our children bound into the school each day full of happiness and excitement. We make sure that while they are in our school, that we keep them safe. This doesn’t only mean physically safe; we also take care of their emotional safety and ensure that they have a feeling of safety throughout the day. Our teachers and staff ensure that every child has a child-centred education and we make sure that families are aware of their progress.
We offer a range of extra-curricular activities to children and to parents. Pupils in our school have been offered activities such as soccer, music, ballet and much more. We also have a dedicated after-school club for families that need their children supervised after school.
Our staff are given opportunities to develop their skills and they take part in a huge amount of professional development, often in their own time and at their own expense. As well as their general qualifications, many of our staff are fully trained in specialised areas, including ASD, First Aid, Maths Recovery and First Steps Literacy.
Our History
Riverview Educate Together National School opened in September 2016 following a short but intensive campaign by parents in Dublin 6w/6, 12 and beyond. Our start-up campaign was known as Terenure Educate Together Start-Up Group, and was formed by local parents in May 2015. The response to the campaign was phenomenal, with over 1,000 parents registering for the proposed new school in a short few months.
Members of the start-up group committee met with then Minister for Education, Jan O’Sullivan in July 2015. The Minister was presented with compelling evidence of demand for an Educate Together National School in the area, with record number of Expressions of Interest collected. Parents also gave their own personal accounts of the difficulties they are having obtaining school places, as well as the reasons why Educate Together is their school of choice.
The campaign was also featured in a number of national and inter-national publications, and radio features including the front page of The New York Times in January 2016.
The New York Times, 21st January 2016: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/europe/ireland-catholic-baptism-school.html?_r=0
At the end of June 2016, The Department of Education announced a new Educate Together school at the site of a former boys school on Limekiln Road, Dublin 12 and Riverview was formed.
RTE Radio 1, Ray D’Arcy Show, 15th August 2016:
Margaret Burke was appointed Principal in August 2016, and we opened our school to Junior Infants in September 2016.