Science Week 2025
Science Week was held from 10th – 14th November 2025 in Ballyconnell School. Every class carried out a variety of experiments and pupils used their Science exploratory and investigation skills.
December 16th 2025 View Article
Presidential Election Sixth Class
Category - History
The week before mid-term, rang a 6 organised a mock presidential election among the students of 4th, 5th and 6th class.
Presidential Election 2025
With the Presidential Election very much a hot button topic throughout the months of September and October, Rang a 6 learned a little bit more about the democratic process.
Firstly, they learned about Proportional Representation (PR), the voting system we have here in Ireland. They learned about important terms related to elections such as: polling station, ballot paper, quota, transfer, valid vote and spoiled vote.
The class also spent time learning about our previous nine Presidents. They then learned a little about the candidates for the 2025 Presidential Election by looking at their campaign websites. Interestingly, they decided to include Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin as a candidate to make the voting process more interesting (even though he had withdrawn from the process a few weeks prior to the election).
The week of the election, the class was split into various teams to help run the election.
These teams included the Educators (Éire, Florrie, Anna and Jamie); the Poll Clerks (Mason, Layna, Gabriel, Ciara, Aoife and Isobelle); the Transporters – (Emily H and Aaron); the Poster People (Hannah, Oliver, Jack and Reuben); the Counters (Sara, Maddie, Darragh, Regan, Emily K and Ellie); and lastly, the Returning Officers (Ciara and Kate).
The Educators headed off to Rang a 4 in the hall to teach the 4th class all about PR and how to cast their vote. They really enjoyed this experience and Rang a 4 learned loads!
We held the election on Wednesday the 22nd of October. Ballyconnell Hall was our polling station. The Poll Clerks were hard at work making sure everyone had their ID and knew how to vote. They even noticed one or two people trying to vote twice!
When the polls closed, the Counters got to work. There was a total of 64 votes with 4 votes being spoiled for a total valid poll of 60. They calculated the quota to be 31. Remarkably, Catherine Connolly was elected on the first count with 42 first preference votes. Jim Gavin and Heather Humphries tied on 9 first preference votes each.
Our Returning Officers then headed to Sinéad’s office to announce the results to the whole school via our school intercom! Check out some photos of the process below.
Our Poll Clerks
Our Educators (missing from photo- Jamie)
Transport & Returning Officers
Our Poster People
Our Counters
