A poignant and moving memorial garden in the grounds of St. Comhghall's College remembers all the pupils who have been tragically killed in road traffic accidents over the years. In the 39 years that the school has been running, a shocking 33 of its pupils have lost their lives on the roads.

St. Comhghall's Principal Gary Kelly said the school felt it was important to pay tribute to those students in this special way.

"We all think it's a good idea to remember the lives of our students who have tragically passed away as a result of road traffic accidents. Their family and friends have been very supportive of the whole project. The memorial garden is by the gate so people can drop in when they want for a few moments, to sit and reflect on the lives of their loved ones," he said.

In 2006, Anita Swift, 16, Jonathan McDonald, 21, both from Newtownbutler, Danica Mary O'Rourke, 17, and Peter Seamus Leonard, 21, were killed in a crash in Lisnaskea. The accident prompted St. Comhghall's into pushing the need for road safety to its young people. Now the school boasts a whole raft of initiatives.

Mr. Kelly explained that the school started by introducing driving lessons for Year 13 and 14 pupils three years ago.

"In conjunction with the DOE we are now offering 12 hours of free driving lessons in a fully approved DOE car, with a fully approved DOE instructor. To the pupil it gets delivered free of charge and is a great system. The pupils are learning GCSE and A Levels in the school so we thought why not let them learn to drive in school as well," he said.

"However, we noted that some of our pupils who didn't achieve all of their GCSEs weren't then able to avail of these fully approved driving lessons, so we introduced a new GCSE in Motor Vehicles and Road User Studies. Then we approached the DOE and got funding to train staff to take that on board, bought the resources and approached local businessman Pat Blake to see if he'd sponsor the new GCSE and he kindly agreed to," added Mr. Kelly.

The school also launched a 'Safer Routes to School' scheme, where children who were travelling to school on bikes, buses or walking to take care on the roads were encouraged to do so more safely.

"We also bumped up our safety in school," explained Mr. Kelly. "After a survey we found that our own road safety in school wasn't the best so we introduced speed ramps to slow down buses and all traffic. We improved our signage, introduced road markings; double yellow lines and zig-zagging lines. We also reduced our speed limit to 5mph," he said.

"And outside the school we noticed that the road safety measures weren't great either. After some campaigning we got flashing signs outside the school to slow down traffic. Interestedly, our school was in a 40mph zone and we were only missing the 30mph zone by about 20 or 30 yards. This seemed to be a bit silly, especially when you take into account that the primary school next door was in the 30mph zone and we were stuck in the 40mph zone. We lobbied MLAs and the DOE until that change was made and we are now finally in a 30mph zone." said Mr. Kelly.

Last year St. Comhghall's found that 70 per cent of its pupils travelled to school by bus, which meant many of them were walking along rural roads.

"We decided we had to get high visibility jackets or reflectors; just something that meant the children could be seen on the roads to and from school. Clarke's Quarry kindly paid for over 300 high visibility vests, and we've only just distributed them - about two weeks ago - when the evenings started to get much darker," he said.

"We realise this is only a temporary measure until we get a permanent solution. The students see the benefits from wearing the vests and they carry them around in their bag, the uptake of wearing it is not as good as the idea behind them, because sadly, they don't always wear them.

But it's an issue that we will continue to address," said Mr. Kelly.

And the topic of introducing a brand new uniform with a reflective strip as early as next year was to be on the agenda at the school's Board of Governors meeting last night. The plans by St. Comhghall's and Devenish College came as a result of the tragic deaths of students Debbie Whyte and Nathan Gault nearly a year ago.

"In the past we have discussed many ideas but the main one is to see about getting a reflective strip on the uniform. We've agreed in principle and will be discussing it at the meeting. Our agenda for September 2010 is to introduce that new uniform with a high visibility strip. Together we can improve the safety of children on our roads," added Mr. Kelly.