Ireland · Dublin
The official sites are sac.ie and st-andrews.ie. It is a day school in Booterstown, English in most classrooms, Irish on the Junior timetable, and a Protestant admissions order that still matters when the year is full. Read the annual admission notice before you fall in love with the astroturf.
Questo ritratto è ancora in inglese. Le altre lingue arrivano scuola per scuola.
Curricolo come lo pubblica la scuola:Irish Primary curriculum · Junior Cycle · Transition Year · Leaving Certificate · IB Diploma Programme
Lingue di istruzione:English
St Andrew’s College Dublin is a fee-paying, interdenominational, co-educational day school in Booterstown, on the southern side of Dublin. The College uses two official domains that resolve to the same institution: sac.ie and st-andrews.ie. The Senior School admissions policy tells you to consult www.st-andrews.ie. Admissions administration sits with Mrs Leanne McCready (lmccready@st-andrews.ie). The Senior School Admissions Officer is the College Principal, Ms Louise Marshall. The Junior School Admissions Officer is the Junior School Principal, Ms Denise Buckley.
It opened on 8 January 1894 at 21 St Stephen’s Green, with 64 pupils, 11 of them aged ten or under. Presbyterian clergymen had met in 1890 around a proposal by the Reverend James Denham Osborne for “a High School, where our Presbyterian children can have the very best education.” The first headmaster was William Woods Haslett. The College moved, struggled, stayed independent in 1938 when amalgamation with The High School was on the table, acquired the Booterstown site from the Sisters of Mercy in 1968, and opened the new campus in January 1973. Girls arrived that September — 12 of them. The boarding department closed in 1995. This is a day school now. If the posting has not found a house, St Andrew’s will not absorb the child.
A Department of Education inspection document the College still hosts says the Senior School was at maximum capacity with an enrolment of 999, and that about 25% of students come from abroad. That inspection is not this year’s census. Treat it as the College’s own published figure from that report, not a count we made in 2026.
The useful questions are not “is it the international school.” The useful questions are: Are you applying to Junior School or Senior School — they are different doors? Do you understand the Presbyterian and Protestant priority order when First Year is oversubscribed? Does this child want the Leaving Certificate or the IB Diploma in Fifth and Sixth Year? And have you opened the live Admissions and Fees page, because the PDF on that page when we researched was 2025/26, not 2026/27?
Dublin families — and relocating families — who want an English-medium education with an Irish legal frame, a Protestant foundation that still structures the waiting list, and a genuine choice between the national Leaving Certificate and the IB.
It is not a gaelscoil. It is not a non-fee-paying community school. It is not a boarding house on the Dublin mountains (that is a different St Columba’s conversation). The guiding statements say the College was, from the start, an “integrated” school and remains so: children from a variety of backgrounds, united by working, learning and playing together. It is also, in Irish law, a school “whose objective is to provide education in an environment which promotes certain religious values,” and it may refuse a child who is not Presbyterian, mainstream Protestant, or of a Reformed Christian tradition if that refusal is essential to maintain the ethos. The policy says that in plain language. Read it before you assume a secular international admissions office.
The school is fee-paying. Fees are set each year by the Board of Management, subject to the Board of Governors. A student does not progress to the next year if Senior or Junior fees for that child or a sibling are outstanding.
Booterstown is not the Green. It is a coastal suburb on the DART, with the College on the site bought from the Sisters of Mercy. The homepage’s history is a walk through buildings: Houseroom Area 5 in 1983 (computers, home economics, changing rooms); a sports hall in 1989; a Sixth Form Centre in 1993; two astroturf pitches opened in 2001 by Tommy Allen, the College’s first international hockey player; the Collen Building in 2010, opened by the then-oldest past pupil and the youngest K1 child. In 2023 the College launched a plan for a new classroom wing, library, and social and performance space. Ask what is actually built when you visit; building plans move.
SAIMUN, the St Andrew’s International Model United Nations, began in 1988. Transition Year has run a Uganda project since 2005. Rugby won its first Leinster Senior Cup in 1906. None of that tells you if your child will have a friend in week two. It does tell you this is a full Dublin school with a long memory, not a converted office block.
Ask to see an ordinary Junior classroom and a Fifth Year corridor, not only the astroturf.
Junior School, from K1. K1 is Junior Infants in the Irish national system, or pre-kindergarten in American language. Children must be four on or before May of the year they enter. The academic year starts in September. K1 core: English (letter sounds, word-building, writing), Irish (basic words — non-Irish students have EFL or US studies while Irish is taught), mathematics in the five primary strands, and Aistear, the play-based frame that folds in SESE, English and maths. Extra: art, computer studies, library, yoga, music, learning centres, SPHE. PE twice a week, sports hall or pitch. K2 is Senior Infants.
The Junior School then follows the Irish Primary curriculum through the P classes. The 2025/26 fee letter names violin and computer rental for P1–P6 and computer-only rental for K1–K2, so those year names are the College’s own.
Senior School. Secondary students must be 12 on 1 January in the calendar year after they enter First Year, and must have finished primary, under Department rules. The College offers:
The IB has been offered since September 1985 on the homepage timeline, and the IB page says exams have been offered since 1984. Use either official line as “since the mid-1980s.” Students take the IB instead of the Leaving Certificate. Six subjects, three higher and three standard, plus Theory of Knowledge, CAS, and an Extended Essay. Subject choices, the older IB booklet still on the site says, should weigh long-term goals, demonstrated strengths, and current interests, with parents, teachers and the guidance counsellor in the room.
An inspection document the College hosts praised the school-designed TY as engaging and progressive, and the IB cohort for the responsibility the programme asks. That is an inspector’s voice from that report, not a 2026 league table.
Accreditation: the guiding statements say that since 1984 the College has been fully accredited by CIS, NEASC, and the IB. Confirm the live cycle; those dates move.
Instruction is in English. Irish is on the Junior timetable from K1. Non-Irish children are not left in the corridor; they have EFL or US studies during Irish. Ask what that looks like in P5, not only in K1.
The Senior School is an Irish secondary with an international stream. About a quarter of students, in that hosted inspection report, came from abroad. That does not make Irish optional in Junior Cycle. Ask how exemptions work if your child has lived abroad, and what the IB language package looks like if they will skip the Leaving Cert.
We are not inventing a modern-language menu beyond what the official pages print. Ask the Principal’s office which languages are actually timetabled this year.
Two doors.
Junior School. Complete the application, email it to the college office with the child’s three most recent school reports. The name goes on a waiting list; you get a receipt letter. Read the Junior School Admissions Policy and, if it applies, the Presbyterian/Protestant Affiliation Form before you click the application link. There is a Payzone link on the same page; we could not extract a Junior application-fee figure from the HTML, so we are not inventing one.
Senior School. No entrance examination to qualify for entry — the policy lists that as an aim. Applications follow the annual admission notice published on the website at least a week before the process starts. Decisions use the Admissions Policy, that year’s notice, and the official form submitted in the notice window. Late applications and applications for years other than the main intake have their own sections in the policy.
If the year is oversubscribed, the Headmistress applies categories in this order:
A tie inside a category is random selection by the Headmistress in front of the Chair of the Board. Date and time of application are not used, if the form arrived inside the notice window. Parental occupation, ability, or an interview-as-condition are not used. Sibling and parent/grandparent links are the family exceptions the law allows.
Recognised feeders the policy lists include Booterstown National School on Cross Avenue, All Saints, Burrow, Delgany, Glenageary/Killiney (Wyvern), Greenlanes, Howth Road, Kill o’ the Grange, Kilternan, Our Lady of Mercy, Rathmichael, St Andrew’s NS Bray, St Andrew’s NS Malahide, St Brigid’s Stillorgan, St Matthew’s Irishtown/Sandymount, St Patrick’s Dalkey, St Patrick’s Greystones, and Taney.
A relocating family is Category 8, not Category 1. That is the sentence to sit with. Flexibility for short-notice relocation is an aim of the policy; it is not a skip-the-queue card. Ask admissions what “relocating” evidence they want this year.
The College will not discriminate on the Equal Status Act grounds the policy lists — and it still has the religious-ethos refusal right described above. Both sentences are in the same document.
The live Admissions and Fees page, when we researched, linked Fees – 2025 2026, a Direct Debit mandate, and Direct Debit information for 2025/26. We did not find a 2026/27 fee letter on the official site. The figures below are from the College’s 2025/26 tuition letter as indexed from that official PDF. They will move. Confirm the live PDF before you budget.
The Board reviews fees annually for wage agreements, inflation, and facilities. All fees, the 2025/26 letter said, must be paid in full by 4 June each year. The Board may stop a student continuing if that student’s or a sibling’s fees are outstanding at the start of the next year. Payment is by direct debit, instalments, or a single sum — the admissions page also hosts the mandate.
| Programme | Annual tuition 2025/26 |
|---|---|
| Junior School | €11,650 |
| Secondary (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th Year) | €9,100 |
| Transition Year (4th Year) | €9,600 |
| International Baccalaureate programme | €12,000 |
Extras the same letter names
Junior School: €100 for all trips that year; violin and computer rental €90 (P1–P6) or €50 (K1–K2, computer only); PTA €20 per family.
Senior School: student diary €12; Yondr phone pouch €10; optional Alumni Association €10 (tell them if you do not want it); PTA €20 per family. The letter also names a Digital Career Portfolio charge for 5th Year and 5IB, and Higher Options Event charges for 6th Year and 6IB (€15, plus €7.50 for an IGC Leaving Certificate directory of entry requirements 2026). Confirm the live letter for those smaller lines; OCR of the PDF was incomplete on a couple of euro amounts, so we are not inventing the missing ones.
A first-year First Year in 2025/26 is not “about €9,000.” It is €9,100 tuition plus diary, pouch, PTA, and whatever the live letter adds. A Junior K1 is €11,650 plus trips, rental and PTA. An IB Fifth Year is €12,000, not the Leaving Cert line. We are not adding a canteen or bus figure because the official pages we fetched do not print one.
Booklists for 2026/27 are already up: Secondary books through Opening Minds, with year codes the College publishes. Orders are not processed by the College.
The admissions aims include providing for children with special educational needs and disabilities in so far as facilities and resources are available. That is not a blank cheque. Bring the current reports to the Junior or Senior Principal and ask, in the room, what St Andrew’s can actually staff.
Pastoral care is a College theme on the Our School page: high expectations of behaviour, deep pastoral support, an active moral conscience. Ask what that looks like for a child who arrived in October from another country.
Two Sixth Year routes sit on the same campus. They are not the same paper.
The Leaving Certificate is the national door: CAO, Irish universities, a known points race. Transition Year is compulsory before it. If you might stay in Ireland, this is the conversation most Dublin parents already know how to have.
The IB Diploma is the portable door: six subjects, TOK, CAS, Extended Essay, exams the College has offered since the mid-1980s. The IB page contrasts it with the Leaving Cert: less “absorption and regurgitation,” more ways of thinking; syllabuses reviewed every seven years. Students entering 5IB take six subjects plus the core. The older subject-choice booklet says they must cover groups 1–6 so that everyone has at least one subject from each group.
If you might leave Ireland in two years, ask the IB coordinator whether this child’s package still opens the CAO, UK, US and European doors you care about. If you will stay, ask why you would not sit the Leaving Cert. The College offers both; it does not choose for you.
Ask which category this application would fall into if First Year is oversubscribed — and what “relocating within three months” means in writing. Ask whether Junior School Sixth Class is likely to feed Senior School this year (Category 3 is not Category 1). Ask how Irish is taught to a child who has never heard it. Ask how many Fifth Years are on the IB versus the Leaving Cert. Ask what the 2026/27 fee letter says, because we only have 2025/26. Ask to see K1 and Fifth Year, not only the Collen Building plaque.
If you are not Presbyterian or Protestant, ask the ethos question twice. The policy has already told you the College may refuse in order to maintain that ethos. That is not a rumour. It is in the PDF.
We are not saying St Andrew’s is the best school in Dublin. We are not guessing the Junior waiting-list length. We are not inventing a 2026/27 fee. We are not treating a 999-student inspection figure as this September’s roll.
Read the current Admissions and Fees page, the Senior School policy, and that year’s admission notice before you resign a house in another country. This is a map. The school still has to be the right Tuesday. The Dublin field note is the week between Booterstown and the hill.
Pagine e documenti ufficiali che abbiamo letto. Se un numero conta per il bilancio o la domanda, aprite il link e controllate che sia ancora valido.
Orientamento amichevole, non una domanda. Date, rette e programmi si muovono. Confermate tutto con la scuola.
Dublin is not one fee-paying campus. It is a Booterstown day house that still offers two leaving papers, and a hill in Whitechurch where most of the children sleep. Ask which Sunday you are buying, and how Irish the yard is after lunch.
15 minLe lettere sul diploma contano. Non sono tutto il ragazzo. Ecco come distinguerle senza mal di testa, e senza fingere che ogni porta resti aperta.
16 minNon vi serve un algoritmo perfetto. Vi servono poche cose vere su vostro figlio, una lista un po’ noiosa sul frigo, e il coraggio di ignorare un bel campus che non vi sta.
15 minLa retta è il numero in homepage. Il PDF è quello che arriva a marzo. Ecco come leggere il secondo, senza inventare un euro, una corona o una scadenza.