4 January 2010
A-Level Prizegiving at Our Lady's
Sr Perpetua with other Cup Winners Laura Doyle, Rebecca Hannaway,
Mary-Kate Arthurs, Erica Conway, Aileen Devlin, Hannah Lavery, Shannon Toner
School Sports Award Winners Roisin Bradley, Rebecca Hannaway, Lisa McPolin,
Mary O’Hare, Fiona O’Neill, Rebecca O’Reilly (absent)
Sr Perpetua Award Winners for School Service Caoimhe Bennett, Melissa Browne, Aoibheann Doherty, Karen Fearon, Catriona McCann, Olivia McCann, Rebecca Morton, Jennifer Murphy, Jennifer McMahon, Clare Savage, Ursula Savage, Annie O’Brien
Mrs Cleland with the Sr Mary Anthony Curran Special Endeavour Award winner Roisin Bradley
Judge Loughran with Laura Doyle & Rebecca Hannaway (Joint 1st Place in Northern Ireland in Art and Design) and Jemma Traynor (2nd Place in Northern Ireland in Government and Politics)
Judge Loughran and Ms Pettigrew with Scholarship winners Seanin O’Neill & Katie Kinkaid
Judge Loughran and Ms Pettigrew with 1st Place in Subject(s) Prize-winners Mary-Kate Arthurs, Claire Boyle, Erica Conway, Aileen Devlin, Nuala Donnelly, Laura Doyle, Claire Gordon, Rebecca Hannaway, Katie Kinkaid, Hannah Lavery, Rachael Leathem, Megan Mairs, Jennifer McMahon, Tara McVeigh, Aine Muckian, Orla O’Dowd, Fiona O’Neill, Sarah Rafferty, Jemma Trainor, Kelly Watters
Judge Loughran and Ms Pettigrew with the Students of the Year Aileen Devlin, Clare Downey,
Claire Gordon, Emily Hart, Roisin Jennings, Katie Kinkaid, Hannah Lavery, Jennifer Murphy,
Seanin O’Neill, Sarah Rafferty, Jemma Trainor
Mrs McAlinden and Mrs McAllister with the First Trust Attendance Award Winners Caoimhe Bennett, Roisin Boyle, Karen Fearon, Niamh Fearon, Sarah Jane Garvey, Claire Gordon, (absent)
Roisin Jennings, Emma Keating, Katie Kinkaid,(absent) Hannah Lavery, Catriona McCann, Olivia McCann Niamh McNally, Fiona O’Neill, Eimear Shields, Lorna Stewart
and First Trust Trophy Winner Shannon Toner
Principal’s Address
Theme: Certainty in a Time of Change
I should like to extend a very warm welcome to everyone who is here this evening: to the class of 2009 and their families; to the staff of Our Lady’s; and to our guests on the Platform this evening: our former Principal, Sr. Perpetua McArdle; Mrs Teresa McAllister and Mrs Fiona McAlinden, our Vice-Principals; Mrs Veronica Kearney, Head of Sixth Form in Our Lady’s; our School Chaplain Fr. Terry Rafferty and Members of the Governing Body of Our Lady’s: our Chairperson, Mrs Eimear Cleland, Mr Patrick Larkin, Mrs Martina Breen, and Mr Aaron Clements
A very special welcome to our Guest of Honour this evening, Her Honour Judge Gemma Loughran.
Thank you so much to everyone for coming to Our Lady’s tonight to be part of a lovely pre – Christmas gathering at which we celebrate the success of every girl in the class of 09 ~ you are all looking very glamorous tonight, very much the sophisticated university students you have all become.
On behalf of everyone here and of all associated with Our Lady’s, I want to offer congratulations upon the terrific academic success which you have all achieved. You have maintained the exceptionally high standards across the board which have seen Our Lady’s placed in the top rank of Northern Ireland Schools every year since records began. Let me just dwell for a moment upon your examination success, girls…….because sometimes we are, perhaps, guilty of taking it for granted as results are so outstanding year after year. Even measured against the highest standards, the overall success which you have achieved is superb. Every single examination was passed and 81% of all examinations were awarded Grade A or Grade B. This year, almost half of your Year Group reached, and in many cases far exceeded, the key figure of 360 UCAS points which is equivalent to three A grades at A Level and which warrants the accolade “Outstanding Academic Excellence”.
And you did this, too, while maintaining a terrific record of involvement in extra-curricular activities: orchestra; choir; drama; debating and public speaking; sport of all kinds. You were central in these and in so many more successes and I want to thank you on this public occasion for all that you contributed throughout your school careers. And you made a huge contribution, too, to fundraising and charitable work of all kinds and to volunteer work in support of the young, the old, the disadvantaged, the marginalised. In so doing, you were living out the Ideals of Mercy Education.
I know that you would want me to thank on your behalf the exceptional staff of Our Lady’s who supported you, challenged you, nurtured you ~ inside and outside the classroom ~ throughout all of your years in school and who delight in seeing you move on with such grace and confidence into the next stage of your lives. I will mention in particular one very special and long serving staff member who retired last year: Mrs Elizabeth Kennedy, definitely a legend in the life of Our Lady’s! I could call her our School Nurse but that wouldn’t even begin to do justice to the many roles she played in your lives and in the lives of so many girls before you. Mrs Kennedy and all who work in Our Lady’s have influenced your lives and helped to become the outstanding young women you all are. I know that you are very grateful to them and to all who have been part of your school life since you entered Primary 1. We in Our Lady’s deeply appreciate all of the excellent work done in our partner Primary Schools and in the High Schools from which some of our sixth formers come. We know that we build upon the strong foundations established there and in your homes: our debt, and yours, to your parents, guardians and family members is immense.
It is 122 years since Our Lady’s was founded in 1887. You have heard often of the 9 girls who were the first pupils and who paved the way for the generations who were to follow them, receiving the superb Mercy Education which has helped to shape you into the very fine young women you have become.
Much has changed in 122 years and if those 9 girls could be whisked in a Time Capsule to 2009 they would be amazed, thrilled, excited and, perhaps, also horrified at what they were seeing and hearing.
Ours is a fast and frenetic world where constant change is the norm, and not least in education. This last year, even more than most, has made great demands upon all in education but I am very confident that the underpinning principles which have been important in the life and spirit of Our Lady’s from its very first days have not changed. We seek to nurture every girl; we value all gifts; we believe in fairness and justice. You are all girls of exceptional academic ability and we celebrate your successes but, more importantly, we value and cherish every quality that makes you the exceptional individuals that you are. It is the people and not the Institution or the building which matter deeply to us. That is something that has not changed in 122 years and it will not change in the future. Though much of the 21st Century might baffle them, I think that those 9 pioneering Our Lady’s girls, if they were to find themselves in 2009, would feel a great kinship with you, as fellow Mercy students, two centuries on.
Your future, of course, will offer so many opportunities which they could never have dreamed of; you will have the opportunity to enter absorbing and challenging professions, and perhaps more than one of them, and thus to make a difference in the world.
And that brings me appropriately to our Guest Speaker this evening, Her Honour Judge Gemma Loughran. Many in the hall will have known, or known of, Mrs Gemma Loughran when she was a Senior Member of the Faculty of St Mary’s University College Belfast. Her reputation as an Educationalist was second to none. Mrs Loughran then studied Law and became a Barrister, specialising in family law, before being appointed to the Bench as a Judge. She is a wonderful example of a person whose gifts have always been used in her various spheres of endeavour for the benefit of others and of society and I am delighted to have her with us this evening as our Guest Speaker: Judge Loughran
Judge Loughran's Speech
It is a great privilege for me to be with you tonight to participate in this very important prizegiving occasion. Each of you prizewinners is returning to her alma mater with what is, I am sure, a sense of nostalgia and also with, I hope, a sense of pride in her own achievements and those of her peers.
You have heard - to my considerable embarrassment – about my achievements. I want to take this opportunity to say that whatever have been my achievements they would not have been possible without the foundations laid by my parents and built on by those who educated me at school and at university
And I want to remind you, immediate past pupils in this school, of just how much you owe to your parents and to your teachers. Your successes which are being celebrated tonight are, of course, due to your own dedication and determination. But those successes have also been achieved by virtue of the support of your parents, who will have worried for you, prayed for you, maybe even nagged you, perhaps helped you with course-work but most of all loved you into giving of your best.
Like you, I was privileged to be a pupil in a school founded on and inspired by religious values and to have experienced the exemplary dedication of many teachers, both lay and religious.
It is right for us tonight to acknowledge the wonderful work of the teachers in this school led by Mrs Pettigrew. Our Lady’s Grammar School ranks as one of the leading academic institutions at post-primary level in Northern Ireland and your achievements are testimony to that ranking. Such a high rating would be impossible without a very hard-working staff whose love of learning is infectious and whose pastoral care ensures that the environment here is one in which all pupils have the opportunity to excel.
Tonight is not the occasion for an incursion into the current debate in our community about the form of post-primary education. Let me just say that the term “equality” is too often used as a mantra without a serious analysis of its meaning and implications. To offer to all pupils the same type of education is not to treat all equally and a monolithic system of post-primary education would create inequalities. Different pupils have different types of potential and the system of education must provide for different types of education to enable each pupil to fulfil his or her potential.
For the pupil who by age 11 is already at a disadvantage in terms of educational achievement a one-size- fits- all secondary system will leave her even further behind.
For the academically able pupil the imperative is for her to be intellectually stretched; The pupil with a creative gift, whether in the field of art, drama, music, writing, needs to be in a learning environment which will enable her to develop that wonderful gift; The examples could be multiplied. The point is that equality is achieved by treating people differently in order to enable each person to develop his or her unique talent or talents.
There is of course more to education than developing particular talents. I want to read to you a most moving letter from a Boston school headmistress to her new teachers.
Dear Teacher
I am the victim of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So I am suspicious of education
My request is that you help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make people more human.
So that is the most important goal for this school – that every member of its community becomes more human - that the civilisation of love should become a reality. That is the challenge which you must now take up in your new fields of endeavour and in your future careers.
I am confident that you, the immediate past pupils of this school, whose achievements are being celebrated here tonight and who have now moved into new fields in education and elsewhere will respond magnificently to that challenge.
I am delighted now to present the awards which mark your achievements of last year and to express the confident hope that you will excel in the future as you have to date.
Judge Loughran
