Closure of Prizon school
Dail Mr Finn 1972
There are school which need extensions. The school in Balla needs an extra classroom to accommodate the children from Prizon. The question is: why the Department insisted on amalgamation in this case when they did not have enough accommodation? There was sufficient accommodation for the Balla children but not enough accommodation for the other children. Surely schools should be kept open until the accommodation problem has been solved. Keeping the schools open would not have cost anything extra.
Dail Records ( Irish Parliament )
“I was about seven or eight when the school closed, there were only 13 pupils left on the roll books. The day the school closed, it took only two cars to bring us up to Balla National School. I can remember my brothers and I going with Fr. Fitzsimons, (R. I. P) who was Parish Priest in Balla at the time. He had a Volkswagen Beetle, and some of the children travelled in the teacher’s car, Mrs. Anne Duggan. Balla School was such a big change for us. Imagine going from 13 children in the entire school to a single classroom with 20 or more children!! Prizon School when we left in 1973 was the same as it had been when our parents went to school there. A big open fire heated the classroom, with the turf which was donated by the families of the children attending the school.
The toilets were somewhat primitive, been what were known as dry toilets, and were located outside in a separate building to the school. Most children brought bottles of tea to school for lunch, which were placed on the hob beside the fire so that they would be nice and warm at lunchtime. I can remember the odd explosion when someone would leave their bottle too near the fire!! Placeholder imageI really missed the closeness of our small school, we were going with all our neighbours, and it took me a while to adjust to the new big school, with so many new faces. It’s hard to believe that it is 29 years since I left Prizon School. I can still remember it so clearly, and I have many fond memories which I will always treasure.
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