St. Patrick's Classical School was founded in 1930 when the Diocese of Meath's seminary, St. Finian's, which had previously been the main provider of denominational education for boys locally, moved from the north Meath town of Navan to the new Diocesan capital, Mullingar in Co. Westmeath. The school's patron is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Meath. The school was previously located in a small architecturally distinctive building on Academy Street in the centre of the town, but it 1970 it moved to a new campus at the at the outskirts of the town.
As its name indicated, it placed heavy emphasis on the teaching of the classics, latin and greek, rather on vocational subjects. Until the granting of free education by the Irish Minister for Education, Brian Lenihan, (his predecessor who proposed free education, Donagh O'Malley died before he could implement the plan) the school operated as a fee-paying school. Its education is now free. Though predominantly Roman Catholic, the school attracts many pupils from other religions and none. It particularly attracts members of the local Islamic community.
The school has produced many prominent figures in Irish politics, business, the international media and comedy. Among its most prominent ex-pupils were James Tully, the Labour Party Deputy Leader and Irish government minister in the 1970s and early 1980s, Jim Fitzsimons, a longtime Fianna Fáil Member of the European Parliament, Jim Duffy, an author and journalist, Simon Cumbers, a prominent broadcast journalist with Associated Press Television) (APTV), David Beggy, a Gaelic football star turned successful Rugby player, Tommy Tiernan and Dylan Moran, both winners of the famous international Perrier Award for Comedy at the Edinburgh Festival who had award-winning comedy shows on British television, and London West-End star Willy Byrne.
The successes of Tiernan, Moran and Byrne were credited to the passion for stage and theatre of one of the school teachers, Richie Ball, whose success in the 1980s in inspiring teenagers to opt for careers in the arts, earned considerable media attention. Another teacher, Kevin Mallon after leaving the school became a prominent Gaelic Games radio sports commentator, while another teacher, Colm O'Rourke, became famous throughout Ireland as a prominent member of the longtime successful Meath Gaelic Football team, before becoming one of the top panelists on gaelic games coverage on Ireland's national broadcaster, RTÉ.
Though the Catholic Bishop of Meath remains the school patron, the school had long been under lay control and has not had a member of the clergy as its president since 1970. With the decline in numbers of people entering the priesthood in Ireland, the school no longer has any priest on its teaching staff.
Navan also has two convent schools and a large non-denominational vocational school. The town's only other Catholic boys school, run by the Christian Brothers, closed amid scandal in the early 1970s. Its past pupils included James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan. The town's only Church of Ireland school, Preston School, closed down in the 1970s.