St. James’ N.S., Bushypark was founded in 1837, and was located beside the church on the main Galway-Moycullen Road, about half a mile from its present location.
A new school was built in 1973, nearer to the city than the original building, to cope with the growing demand for school places. New estates like ‘Dangan Heights’ and ‘Bushypark Lawns’ were built which meant that the suburbs of the city had extended out as far as Bushypark.
Pupil enrolment continued to grow, resulting in a school extension being erected in 1983. This consisted of 4 new classrooms, a P.E. hall, an office, staff room and library. In the late 1980’s the old P.E. hall was converted into 2 classrooms.
In 1993 a new P.E. hall was built on the grounds.
In Sept 2006, a major school extension and refurbishment project was completed to cope with the ever-growing demand for quality education in the Bushypark area. The school then consisted of 13 classrooms and well laid out administrative, support teaching and library accommodation.

In September 2011 the school embarked on another extensive construction project, adding additional classrooms, 4 support rooms and further ancillary accommodation at first floor level, complete with stairwells and lift.

In July 2014, we started another exciting project – installing new All-Weather Astro Turf pitches to the rear of our school!  The project was a big one, which saw us excavating out the existing high level pitch and bringing the new pitch down to the same level as the school yard – making it much more accessible and usable.  There are a total of 3 soccer pitches, which when not being used for soccer, all 3 combined can be used for Gaelic.  This has been a fantastic addition to our school and has seen our break times transformed  due to our Active School Committee who set up sports activities each day during break time.

St. James’ National School is now a “state of the art” 16 mainstream classroom facility, with generous support and ancillary accommodation, an extensive school library and a spacious and well equipped school gymnasium and fantastic All-Weather Astro Turf Pitches.

St. James’ National School is a Co-educational Catholic Primary School, with an inclusive multi-cultural ethos, catering for children from Junior Infants to Sixth Class.

At present there are over 380 pupils in our school.