As is tradition, our annual Junior Prizegiving took place as part of our Year 11 Induction on Friday 28 August, as our new Year 11 pupils returned to school for the start of the academic year.

It is a ceremony that belongs to a particular moment. These young people arrived in Year 8 three years ago, and Junior Prizegiving is where we stop, before the GCSE years begin in earnest, and say out loud what they have done. Key Stage 3 is not a rehearsal for the qualifications that follow. It is the making of the pupil who will sit them.

Pupil of the Year for Endeavour

Presented to Lewis Daly, Patrick Loughran and Rachel Fitzsimons, for three years of steady, unshowy effort of the kind that does not always announce itself but is noticed by every teacher who taught them.

Pupil of the Year for Academic Achievement

Presented to Jamie Meehan and Rosa Slane, in recognition of sustained excellence across the full breadth of the Key Stage 3 curriculum.

Pupil of the Year for Contribution to School Life

Presented to Senan Greene and Ella Williams, whose names appear again and again in the life of this school outside the classroom, in the clubs, the teams, the corridors and the small kindnesses that never make a report.

The Tiarnán Trainor Spirit of St Paul’s Award

The final awards of the morning were presented to Eimear Cunningham and Caoimhe Trainor. This award carries a name and a memory, and it is given to the pupils who most fully embody what we mean when we talk about the spirit of this place: truth, compassion, integrity and kindness, lived rather than recited.

Junior Prizegiving is one of the few mornings in the school year when we are able to look a year group in the eye and tell them, in front of their families, exactly what we think of them. Three years of work sits behind every one of these awards, and behind a great many more that were not called out from the platform. To our Year 11 pupils: you have made a good beginning, and the next two years will ask more of you than the last three. You are ready for it.

Dáithí Murray, Principal

Our thanks to Mrs Catríona McCartan, Head of Year 11, and to the form teachers and subject staff whose nominations and preparation made the morning what it was, and to the families who came out to be part of it.

We wish our Year 11 pupils every success in the GCSE years ahead.