The actual buildings that make up Ballincollig Community School in Co Cork, which is celebrating 21 years this year, are a far cry from the grey walls of many educational institutions. Designed by Andrez Wejchert, the architect responsible for UCD Belfield, the lowlying buildings look out onto a central courtyard and are bright orange and yellow in colour. In 1973, the Department of Education promoted an ideas competition to stimulate new thinking about the physical form community schools might take. Ballincollig School was one result of this competition which "stressed the need for forward thinking and generic ideas that could be adapted to particular situations."

The school opened its doors on September 14th, 1976, with a staff of 10 and an enrolment of 114. Ballincollig had a population of 600 then, but it's now one of the fastest growing satellite towns in Ireland with a population of 17,000. The school now has 830 pupils and a staff of 55.

Edith Waterman is in charge of adult education at the school. "The community here is more settled now with kids growing up and adults coming back to the school for night classes," she said. "We have about 20 teachers for between 600 and 700 adults. For years, cake decorating was the most popular course. Now, it's information technology."

Dan Murray, principal of the school, is very proud that the school was the first one in the country to have information technology. "In 1986 Sean MacCarthy, the Fianna Fail junior minister for science and technology, opened our IT centre," he says. "It consisted of electronic lathes and about 12 computers mainly paid for by parents. We're very lucky to have two teachers who can literally upgrade computers themselves. Normally, you'd have to sell the old one after a while and invest in a new one.

"We've never had occasion to call in a technician to deal with computers. We now have about 30 computers altogether and pupils in first year, fourth year and fifth year use them. We have our own website now and recently received an email from one of our past pupils living in Panama."

The ethos of the school is `serving the community both by day and by night from an educational and a sporting point of view,' says Murray. Before the days of community schools which he always advocated, there was a strong demarcation between vocational schools - known as `techs' - and other second-level schools.

"I worked in the vocational school system for 17 years," says Murray. "I had to go around begging parents to send their children to to the tech. That was in Millstreet. I was a young man at the time and I couldn't see myself sitting down by the fire drinking cups of tea with the parents every autumn, which you had to do. There would be posters all over the place and it would remind you of election time."

The school has a pastoral system to ensure that every pupil gets plenty of attention, despite the big numbers. "We have heads of years who would be teachers," says the principal. "Each head is responsible for the academic and general welfare of their pupils. It's a kind of mini-school within a school and you'll find this in all community schools. The head system has worked extremely well for us. There is great cohesion within the year group. The head teachers take the pupils right through from first year to Leaving Cert year."

Each class also has a class tutor who keeps a journal on pupils, noting punctuality and dealing with any problems. "We have a lay person as the school chaplain, a remedial teacher and a career guidance teacher."

This is the first year that the school has introduced a study period for Leaving Cert pupils. They come in at night for three hours.

Academic results at the school are a source of pride for Dan Murray. This year, 16 out of 130 pupils got A1s in the Leaving Cert. But, he says, academic achievement isn't everything.

The school puts strong emphasis on sports. Its Astro turf pitch, which has just been completed, was financed by the community and Belvedere Hockey Club. Strange to think that, with all this activity going on, the site of the school was originally earmarked for Cork airport.