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About Us - Navan Education Support  Centre

OUR MOTTO: "Serve, Sustain and Strengthen the Education Community."

Navan Education Support Centre, first founded in 1972 is a modern training facility now located on spacious grounds donated by Loreto Convent in Athlumney, Navan. Our large modern building is well equipped and provides a vibrant and welcoming atmosphere for professional learners and communities of practice. Our large grounds include a biodiverse outdoor classroom for schools and teaching professionals and local community members to utilize and enjoy.  The building is purpose built to accommodate teacher professional learning and various training events. The Centre training rooms can accommodate up to 220 attendees on site.

NESC works as a partner in education as part of the wider network of ESCs located in 21 Centres regionally across Ireland. We are directed in our work towards our local school communities in Louth, Meath and Cavan delivering priority supports and professional learning opportunities to meet continual and evolving needs. Our region includes a total of 326 schools and over 4000 teaching professionals.  The school profiles in this area include, urban, rural, DEIS 1 & 2, gaelscoileanna, scoileanna gaeltachta and direct provisions schools.

Development of school improvement through teaching & learning is reflected in the work that we do. Capacity building is the central tenet of our work and a feature that is at the core of the teaching profession, through lifelong learning opportunities.

Our primary work includes:

  • Focusing on teacher improvement as the most significant influence on student achievement and school improvement
  • Focusing on leadership development as the second most significant influence on school improvement.
  • Engaging directly with local schools, inclusive of all school community members to meet their local support needs
  • Engaging extensively with school communities throughout Ireland through extensive online programme of events
  • Offering a broad range of supports and guidance including, face-to-face workshops; sustained supports; online series and webinar engagements; library resources; assessment toolkits; partnered projects and national programmes.
  • Promoting & preserving relationships across Centre network-leading out as a well-established model of collaboration at a national level

The Centre currently administers a number of national programmes for OIDE including, Transition Year; Post Primary Business & Economics; Post Primary Home Economics; Modern Languages and LCVP.  We also administer a number of national projects including, the Arts in Primary, Choose Safety, Primary Chess and the DEIS Summer Camps programme.

The Centre operates as a centre of excellence for the professional and personal support needs of all school community members.  We are open as a meeting space also for school personnel and alumni in our local region.  A warm welcome is extended to all from the wonderful staff, the director and the management committee of NESC.  We look forward to the future and our continued work in service to teaching and learning.

Management

The following make up the Navan Education Centre Management Committee.
  • Chair/ARC – Pauline Egan
  • Vice Chair – Muireann Broderick
  • Treasurer/ARC – Clíodhna Devlin, Bernadette Clarke-McGuinness
  • Committee – Bernadette Clarke-McGuinness, Brien Kearns, Laura Kearns, Fergal Nugent,  Michéal Brennan, Marian McMahon, Ciara Uí Chonduibh, Evan Burlingham 
  • ARC - John Condon
  • Secretary/ARC – Éadaoin McGovern
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History

In 1972, an invitation was send to all Primary and Post-Primary schools in County Meath to nominate teachers to attend a general meeting in the CYMS hall in Navan - now the Community Centre - in connection with the establishment of a Teachers' Centre in the town.

There was a large attendance at the meeting and officials from the Department of Education outlined the purposes and aims of the new centres, which were being set up at that time in various parts of the country.

At the meeting in the CYMS hall several teachers were nominated to form a steering committee to run the Navan Teachers' Centre. The centre in Navan was among the first centres established in the country.

The local inspector of schools, Mr Brendan Molloy, was commissioned to organise accommodation and to purchase some basic items of furniture for the centre. Two rooms were rented in what was the old Vocational School, now the planning section of Meath County Council, and chairs, a desk and an ink duplicator were purchased.

The first meeting of the steering committee was held on Thursday June 15th 1972 at 8.30pm. The minutes of that meeting record the fact that Mr Pat Whitelaw was elected chairman and Mr Jim Culligan was elected as the Centre's first Secretary/Director.

In 1974 the Teachers’ Centre moved to St. Anne’s Loreto Convent. This was its home up until 1989 when St. Anne’s closed and the entire convent along with the Loreto Sisters moved to St. Michael’s in Athlumney. From then until December 2000, the centre was accommodated in a wing of the convent.

In 1997 the Department of Education and Science announced that the centre in Navan was to be accorded full time status. The search was now on for a site for a new building. Having considered a number of options, the present site on the corner of the Loreto grounds was chosen. Construction of the new centre began in November 1999. One year later the building was complete and the links with Loreto now entered a new phase.