Welcome to Good Counsel College…or “The Counsel” as many of you know and call it! It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our new web site. I hope you find it interesting whether you are a present or a past pupil, a present or a past parent or guardian, or indeed a present or a past teacher. I welcome also those of you who have simply happened across this site and equally hope you will find our school and what goes on here of interest to you.
We are twenty-five years old this year…well, in our present campus that is! Our history goes well back before that in our original site in the centre of the town of New Ross. As an educational community we strive to embody the values of unity, truth and love in our everyday interactions. We gather these ideals from Saint Augustine, the founder of the Order of Saint Augustine, the Augustinians, who founded and still run the school. We share these ideals with Augustinian schools all over the world and especially with our sister school, Saint Augustine’s College in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford.
Our school of nearly eight hundred students is built to reflect our ideals. As you will see here we are like a small campus with many buildings all serving the community which is Good Counsel. As well as classroom blocks named after our Saints, Cascia (Saint Rita), Villa Nova (Saint Thomas) we have a beautiful Church at the heart of our little village. The Augustinian Community is resident here too with 2 Waterford men and a Rathnure man to boot! Our marvellous Sports Centre is named after our last Principal, Fr John Cosgrave OSA (RIP) and we have a further centre dedicated to the core activity of our school, Pastoral Care, which is named after his predecessor, Fr Jackie Power OSA.
We are a living and vibrant community and the campus regularly extends to cater for new needs. Just look at our beautiful all-weather pitches next to the Sports Centre as evidence of that.
But buildings tell so little of our story. The life blood of the community is the students who attend here every day…what can they do? What do they do? Read on…
John Hennebry O.S.A.
Principal