Schools and education in Monaghan
Monaghan town has an unusually wide range of schools for its size, partly because it serves a large rural catchment and partly because it kept both a Catholic and a Protestant secondary tradition, alongside an Irish medium school. Families moving here from a city are often surprised by how much choice there is.
Secondary schools
There are five post primary schools in and around the town.
St Macartan’s College is the diocesan boys’ school, founded in 1840 and one of the oldest secondary schools in Ulster. It sits above the town on the Armagh road and takes both day pupils and, historically, boarders.
St Louis Secondary School is the girls’ school, run by the Sisters of St Louis, on the Broad Road. Its site and the convent grounds behind it are part of the shape of the town. Details are on the school’s own site.
Beech Hill College is the co educational school under Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board, on the Armagh road. It came out of the old vocational school and is the largest of the ETB schools in the town.
Coláiste Oiriall teaches through Irish, and is also under the ETB. It draws from a wide area, well beyond Monaghan town, because it is the only Irish medium post primary in the county.
Monaghan Collegiate School is the Church of Ireland co educational school on the edge of the town, a small school with a long history and a strong sports programme.
Primary schools
The town’s primary schools include Gaelscoil Ultain, which teaches through Irish and moved into a purpose built school on the old barracks site on the Armagh Road in 2013, along with St Mary’s Boys National School, Scoil Rois and several parish and rural schools in the townlands around the town.
Catchments and enrolment dates differ from school to school, and small rural schools nearby often have places when town schools do not. The full list of primary schools with addresses, roll numbers and enrolment details is on headstart.ie’s Monaghan schools listing, which is easier to work through than the Department’s raw database.
Preschools and childcare
Childcare is the part of this that changes most and is hardest to pin down, because most preschools and creches in Monaghan are small independent operations without much of a web presence. Places under the ECCE scheme go quickly and people generally put a name down well before the child is due to start.
Current creches and preschools in the Monaghan area, with contact details, are listed on headstart.ie’s Monaghan creches page. Monaghan County Childcare Committee is the other place to ask, and they will know about vacancies before any listing does.
Further and adult education
Cavan and Monaghan Education and Training Board runs post leaving certificate courses, apprenticeship training and adult education across both counties, with a training centre and further education provision in the town. Their course lists are on cmetb.ie.
For degree level, the nearest options are Dundalk Institute of Technology, about fifty minutes south east, and Ulster University’s Magee campus in Derry. A good number of Monaghan students go north to Queen’s in Belfast, roughly an hour and a quarter away.
The education campus
Several of these schools sit together on the Armagh Road in what is known locally as the education campus, which also holds the Garage Theatre. It means the arts venue and the schools share facilities and car parking, which works better than it sounds.
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