A REMOTE Gaelic-speaking secondary school with the best teacher-pupil ratio in Ireland has been given permission by the country’s department of education to continue with classes after a three-year experiment.

For the 175 residents of Tory Island, the victory is especially sweet as it comes after years of putting pressure on the authorities for a better educational deal for the wind-swept community, six miles off the Donegal coast.

For decades secondary children attended boarding school on the mainland. During the winter the island - just three miles by one - was bereft of teenagers.

“I’m sure the fact that the school got a 100 per cent pass rate in the Junior Certificate this summer has helped us in our bid to continue,” said Mary-Clare McMahon, headteacher over just seven teachers and 21 students.

“We hope this will go some way towards getting the children to live and work on the island.”

Now islanders, who continue with their tradition of having a “king” - currently 58-year-old musician and painter Patsy Dan Rogers - want the school to expand. They have invited education chiefs on an inspection tour this term to further their bid for extra funding.

If they get the go-ahead, science, IT, metalwork and woodwork classes will be added to the curriculum. It would also enable a summer programme to be established, attracting more tourists to classes in Irish language, ornithology and art, with the islanders as tutors.

In the 1980s the government wanted to turn the island into an army firing range and enticed people away with free housing. A few went but most dug their heels in.

With the collapse of fishing and farming, the island is experimenting with limited tourism. It was the English painter Derek Hill who raised its profile by staying there every summer for more than 40 years and inspiring the amateur school of primitive painting. There are moves, too, to establish a timber factory and to build an airstrip.

Ms McMahon is also trying to get the National of University of Ireland, Galway, to agree to a campus on the island.“Having tertiary education and distance learning facilities here would make sure we are never forgotten again,” she said.