We are lucky here in Shielbaggan to have made contacts with a lot of local organisations and this has helped us to progress with our Active Flag activities. Below you will see some of the work that has been taking place in our school recently.

We have a number of children who are very interested in equestrian activities. Last year,2018/2019 ,we had enough children  to enter a team in Wexford Equestrian’s Inter School League. It ran on Sunday mornings during the winter and early spring in Wexford Equestrian Centre, Tomhaggard. Many thanks to their parents who accompanied the children and horses and looked after the team for this event.

One of the local clubs with which we have a great partnership is  St. James’ GAA Club. One of the initiatives which has been introduced in the past two years has been Hurling 365. We have amazing parents, Brendan and Denise who come to the school every Friday after school and facilitate this. It’s totally optional for the children and it takes place regardless of the weather. We have ,on some occasions, had half the school taking part. We have had visits from local clubman and Wexford captain,Matthew O’Hanlon as well as Shane O’Hanlon, Wexford’s Hurling Development Administrator. The children taking part have made terrific progress and they love forward eagerly to Friday afternoons.

Children from our school also take part in Rackard League football,hurling and camogie. We join with the three other schools in the local area for this and once again we are grateful to St. James’ GAA Club for the help they give us with our Cumann na mBunscoil teams every year.

Another club with which a lot of our pupils play is New Ross Rugby Club. We were lucky  in 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 to have coach Brendan Houlihan attend the school for a four week training session. The children loved every minute of these sessions. We entered four teams in a rugby blitz in Wexford in June 2019 to practise some of the new skills. We were due to attend this year also but the event was cancelled due to COVID 19 restrictions. Below are some photos of the coaching session as well as the rugby blitz.

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A new partnership which has been developed in Shielbaggan during the 2019/2020 school year has been with the Arts Council under the Creative Schools scheme. This has allowed us to integrate physical activity with other curricular areas. In December we combined Drama and PE and spent the day in Duncannon Community Centre with our Creative Associate Tony. A great day was had by all -plenty of learning and lots of fun too!

Our best partners in all that we do are our parents of course and in March 2020 the Parents’ Association and the Board of Management installed a new walking/ running track around our school field. The plan was to train and to take part in Parkrun in JF Kennedy park in June. Those plans have been put on hold due to COVID 19 but we will be back in action as soon as possible!