{"id":78842,"date":"2025-09-22T13:07:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T13:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/78842\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T13:07:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T13:07:13","slug":"the-dublin-secondary-school-that-went-co-ed-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/78842\/","title":{"rendered":"the Dublin secondary school that went co-ed \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

After 135 years of being a single-sex school for boys, St Joseph\u2019s secondary school in Fairview<\/a> made a historic shift in 2023, opening its doors to girls for the first time. <\/p>\n

Now, two years on, the first mixed cohort in the school is preparing to sit their Junior Certificate. <\/p>\n

Of the 310 junior cycle students (first to third year) at St Joseph\u2019s, 117 are boys and 71 are girls. <\/p>\n

Carly Nolan was among the first group of girls to join the school in 2023. Now in third year, she enjoyed being one of a few girls within her year group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt special, because there was only like, 13 girls,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Girls and boys cross decades-long gender divides as single-sex schools go mixedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

She feels that being in a mixed school means there\u2019s \u201cnot as much drama as there would be in an all-girls school\u201d. <\/p>\n

Her classmate, Sean McInerney Radford, agrees. \u201cI suppose it could be more drama in an all-girls school. In all-boys schools there might be more fights.\u201d <\/p>\n

Both students went to single-sex schools for primary school, but were relatively unfazed by the transition to a mixed school. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bit different [from primary school], but I didn\u2019t mind it,\u201d says Carly.<\/p>\n

Second-year student Shreedha Akula, who also went to a single-sex primary school, shares a similar view.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really care. It was just the same, it wasn\u2019t that crazy,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, first-year student Alex Halal, who has just started first year in the school, says being in a co-ed school felt \u201cweird\u201d at first. <\/p>\n

\u201cJust seeing boys [in school] was normal,\u201d he says. However, since settling into secondary school, he has made friends with both boys and girls. <\/p>\n

St Joseph\u2019s, founded as a Christian Brothers school in 1888, has seen a series of transformations in recent years. Now under the trusteeship of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust, it is part of the P-Tech programme, an industry-led initiative that integrates academic learning with real-world skills in technology and coding. Students at the school have been able to complete internships in companies such as IBM, Cisco and Irish Water. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually really exciting,\u201d says principal Alexandra Duane. \u201cIf you do P-Tech all the way to sixth year, you\u2019re getting a QQI level six, which is obviously higher than your Leaving Cert.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DeputryDeputry principal Ciara Dowling, right, with students Alex Halal, Darci Hynes and Carly Nolan, at St Joseph\u2019s, Fairview, Dublin <\/p>\n

Deputy principal Ciara Dowling says opportunities to engage with Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) was \u201cone of our big selling points\u201d for prospective students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole purpose really is to bridge the gap for disadvantaged students that wouldn\u2019t have access to these work placements,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Technology has proven to be a particularly popular subject across the board. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe girls love technology,\u201d says Dowling. \u201cThe stereotype isn\u2019t right.\u201d <\/p>\n

Duane says when she was a student in a single-sex secondary school, subject choices were more limited. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I went, we had home ec[onomics], and music and arts and whatever, but I would have loved to do something like technical graphics, which was in the boys school down the road, and same with technology,\u201d she says. \u201cThe whole model is inclusivity.\u201d <\/p>\n

The school has been able to offer spots in special classes to autistic<\/a> girls in the area. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not many places around here that would have a special class that\u2019s a co-ed school or a girls\u2019 school,\u201d says Duane. <\/p>\n

Both boys and girls in the school have been enjoying extracurricular activities such as a drama club, a craft club, coding club and Lego club. <\/p>\n

Sports is \u201ckind of an awkward area\u201d for mixed schools, says Dowling. \u201cA lot of the sports don\u2019t offer mixed teams.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some mixed sports, so we do mixed tag rugby, and then we have separate girls\u2019 and boys\u2019 teams … but in an ideal world we would like to have them playing mixed sports.\u201d <\/p>\n

Many parents in the area have welcomed the shift to coeducation. <\/p>\n

\"SeanSean McInerney Radford and Shreedha Akula <\/p>\n

Although Ireland has a high proportion of all-boys and all-girls schools compared with other European countries, a 2024 study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) found that a large majority of secondary school students want to attend mixed schools, and only a small minority in single-sex schools prefer it that way. <\/p>\n

Fewer than 20 per cent of students in single-sex schools said they preferred their school\u2019s gender composition, compared with almost 90 per cent in coeducational schools. <\/p>\n

When asked whether they would prefer mostly single-sex schools or mostly coeducational schools across the education system as a whole, a preference for coeducational schools emerged, with 61 per cent of students favouring mostly or all coeducational schools. <\/p>\n

Just 5 per cent preferred mostly single-sex schools, while about a third stated a preference for an equal number of each type.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After 135 years of being a single-sex school for boys, St Joseph\u2019s secondary school in Fairview made a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[11357,9,10,53098,18,53097,13,14,2215,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,12551,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-78842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-autism","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-dublin-3","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-fairview","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-for-you","17":"tag-headlines","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-latest-news","21":"tag-latestnews","22":"tag-main-news","23":"tag-mainnews","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-second-level","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}