Dominican Education in Ireland 1820-1930

Focusing on the part played by Dominican women in schools and colleges from 1820 to 1930, this book brings new findings to the history of the Catholic education of women and makes an important contribution to the general history of education in Ireland. While the Dominicans were engaged in primary education from 1820, they were more involved in running boarding and day schools which catered for secondary education. Chapter 1 concentrates on primary education including the involvement of the state through the 1831 Stanley System of national education. Chapter 2 deals specifically with the secondary sector and explores some of the similarities and differences between the educational methods used by two other European orders who set up schools, and the Dominicans. Chapter 3 details the Dominicans' struggle to set up university classes for the women who had availed of the Intermediate Act of 1878, which qualified them to attend undergraduate courses and enter for the examinations of the Royal University. The Dominicans are acknowledged as being the first to provide higher education for Catholic women. They also provided a training college for national teachers and for secondary teachers. The fourth chapter covers the training of the nuns themselves for the teaching profession and the foundation in 1930 of the Conference of Convent Secondary Schools (CCSS), which played an important part in Irish education until well beyond the mid-twentieth century.