St. Catherine's Senior School
#BeActive Education Award nominee
St. Catherine’s Senior School, Cabra, Dublin is a primary school catering for girls from second class to sixth class (8-12 year olds). As a DEIS school (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools), the children experience a significant level of educational disadvantage with a high percentage of students coming from backgrounds associated with a lower socio-economic status.
In September 2019, they decided to sign up to the Active school Flag Initiative to facilitate their commitment to developing a physically active school community with an aim to increase physical activity and movement levels throughout the entire day. The Active School Flag (ASF) Initiative is a Department of Education and Skills Initiative (DES) supported by Healthy Ireland, which aims to get schools more active, more often. They achieved their ‘Active School’ flag in May 2021. The flag was raised on June 4th and the whole school celebrated the important milestone.
“Here in St. Catherine’s, we are committed to a holistic education and place a particular emphasis on physical activity in school, at home and in the community. It is acknowledged that children coming from backgrounds associated with a lower socio-economic status are less likely to meet the 60-minute minimum requirement of physical activity (PA) daily. We believe that our children must be provided with additional opportunities to experience fun co‐curricular PA in order to establish positive activity habits.”
One of the greatest challenges for St. Catherine’s over the last 2 years was keeping the children active during periods of school closure due to Covid. The active committee worked hard during this time coming up with ideas for school challenges such as ‘Design your own obstacle course’ and focus weeks such as Yoga Week and Scavenger Hunt Week and even competitions such as the ‘Active Slogan Competition’ and ‘You’ve Got Talent: Active Edition’. They also had a bumper packed ‘Active Home Week’ (ASW 2020). There was 'Take Teddy/Dog for a Walk', Dances, Yoga, FMS Challenges, Beat the Teacher Challenges. There was a number of whole school activities like a virtual sports day, the 10k virtual lockdown challenge and a Beat the Teachers Steps challenge. The committee also created cross-curricular activities e.g. Favourite Sports Star Fact File, Interview a Sports Hero and write a sports poem and art poster to encourage others to be active.