This year Central Model Schools celebrate 160 years! Imagine being part of such wonderful history. Keep an eye out for details of celebrations to mark this wonderful anniversary! Here is a little history lesson of the schools:
Central Model Schools on Deverell Place, off Gardiner Street, are part of a long tradition of exemplary educational practice. The building of the Infant and Senior Schools was built in 1859. It was originally the central training unit for the network of Victorian ‘model schools’ across Ireland, an exemplary educational site, where the teachers of the future were themselves trained. The centrepiece of a state-run complex of organised education, its aspirations were encoded into its architecture: a palazzo-style, Italian gothic structure, mirrored pavilions and bays arranged with pleasing regularity around a central courtyard, a barrel-vaulted passage through the main building separating boys’ and girls’ schools. (This archway seems to echo the architecture of the British educational establishment; it’s like something from a school-building in Cambridge maybe!) It was designed by Frederick Darley to fit within a complex of buildings which included a classical pavilion, residential facilities for teachers in training, as well as, across the courtyard, the home of the Board (now the Department) of Education, Tyrone House.
In 1922 its use as a teacher-training institution was discontinued, but it remains a primary school, serving, in recent decades, children from all kinds of backgrounds worldwide!