Welcome

Welcome to our school website. We invite you to browse through our school’s activities, curriculum, photos and policies to get a sense of who the school community at St Mary’s CBS really are. We hope you will watch it grow and develop, as our school does, year on year.

Here, in St Mary’s CBS, we have strong historical ties with Portlaoise town, the surrounding townlands and in particular, with our original school in Tower Hill. This year, 2022, marks our school’s founding in Tower Hill 175 years ago. 1847 was a difficult time in the history of Ireland. Famine was looming and political, social, religious and agricultural unrest would mark the next few decades. Despite these upheavals, Edmund Rice founded a small school in our town, one of the first outside of Waterford and Dublin, which has continued to the 21st Century to educate the young men of our community.

For those interested in our history, the original corner stones of the Tower Hill school, which were removed from the Tower Hill school in 2010, are now part of our school entrance in the Borris Road.

In 2010, we opened the doors of the Borris Road site with 500 students. Since then we have steadily grown and have grown into our extensive building and school campus. Our facilities, which include the impressive Rice Nagle Sports Facility, soccer and GAA pitches and basketball hard courts, are among the best in the country and our students and staff enjoy state of the art facilities in which to learn and work.

However a school facility merely provides a venue in which to provide the opportunities our students deserve in which to grow, gain experience and skills to leave our school with. We have shown over the years that our students are cared for holistically, as individuals. True to the Edmund Rice tradition, which underpins all our policies and curricula, we endeavour to:• Provide excellent teaching and learning,
• Promote partnership with the wider school community,
• Create a caring school community
• Nurture faith, Christian spirituality and Gospel-based values
• Provide leadership opportunities for students and staff alike

I hope you will enjoy browsing this website and learning about life in St Mary’s CBS. The daily notifications on the homepage are a feed from our School App. If your son is already a student, you can easily download and sign up to our App where you will be kept updated daily on school information and activities. Our office is available to answer your queries and support you and your son(s) on his journey with us.