Secondary school Belfast

[bigdecisions24]

I'm looking for advise/recommendations re secondary school’s in Belfast.
We are in the early stages of planning a move from London ( to South Belfast specifically) and need to find a school for DS currently yr9.
Have absolutely no clue where to start re schools as no contacts in NI.
He is currently at an all boys catholic school. He is reasonably outgoing and confident, quite academic but not sporty.
Are there any obvious choices we should consider equally places to avoid?
Worried his English accent may make him an easy target for teasing/ bullying.
Would really appreciate any insight

Based on my own experiences as a kid (so not recent!) I’d say Methody - it’s co-ed, very mixed in terms of religion (was c40% Catholic 20 years ago), excellent for academics and extra curriculars.

If you want a Catholic school then Our Lady & St Pat’s Knock, Rathmore or Aquinas all worth a look (those are co-ed). I don’t think there are any boys Catholic schools in South Belfast (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong) but St Malachys in North Belfast and St Mary’s CBS in West Belfast had good reps.

Thanks Harriet
I will definitely look at these, all boys sch not a sticking point at all, in fact I think he'd be very happy at a co-Ed

DD went to Methody - it used to be a fabulous, incredibly prestigious school and has a reputation throughout the country but in recent years has gone downhill massively. From a social and extra-curricular point of view it can’t be beaten but as for academics there are far better schools out there. The standard of teaching is shocking in some areas - think A level students having to basically teach themselves their entire physics course! In my/DD’s circle I don’t know of any families who were particularly satisfied with their child’s time there, lack of teaching again being the main concern. There are other issues that I would be happy to discuss via PM if you would like

Our Lady & St. Patrick’s College Knock is very well regarded academically, anyone I have met with kids there has been really pleased with it. Sullivan Upper School in Holywood, around 10/15 min train ride from Belfast is another great co-ed. Friends School, Lisburn is amazing and I’ve heard nothing but positive stories, it’s around a 20 minute drive from south Belfast.

Campbell College & Royal Belfast Academical Institution (otherwise known as Inst) are the two main all boys grammar schools and are seen as the big rivals to Methody.

English accent isn’t going to be an issue whatsoever, nobody would bat an eyelid! Any of the good grammar schools are incredibly diverse with equally respectful pupils, he wouldn’t stick out at all

Grosvenor is another very good school. I know a couple of friend's children who are there and they are very happy and doing well.

NI still operates a very rigid grammar/secondary system though there are a few comprehensives. The recommendations here assume that your DS will pass the entrance exams. You need to make choices based on whether you prefer single/mixed sex, Catholic/non-denominational, and grammar/non-selective. The academics are generally excellent and the schools provide a rigorous education, though I did attend an all girls Catholic grammar and the real world came as a bit of a shock!

Campbelll isn’t really a grammar school like the others mentioned here, it’s fee paying and not selective academically. I know a boy there who loves it.
Depending where you end up in South Belfast, the train to Holywood for Sullivan Upper could be pretty convenient. Lagan College is integrated and hugely in demand for S Belfast kids.

Is your DS academic, OP? As PPs have said, the system here is grammar/secondary.

Also, when is his birthday? We have a different cut off point than England, here it is end of June, not end of August.

As you probably already know, yr 9 in England is yr 10 here, as we start at P1 and don’t call it Reception. Just so you’re enquiring about spaces in the right year.

I was going to say St Pat's. It used to be a selective Catholic school. Don't know if it's selective any more.

There is also a pretty cheap (compared to others) private school called Campbell College. It's all boys.

Oh Campbell has been mentioned already! Yes, it's private but not expensive - we looked at it for our ds in future (but we now live in England so a moot point)

St Pats is selective and very hard to get into due to being so oversubscribed from what I’ve heard. Siblings at the school or an address very nearby seem to be essential for entry into any other year than Form 1, and even then it’s a shot in the dark as to whether there’s space or not

Wow I’m surprised to hear that about Methody - what a big change. They used to have a very strong Oxbridge tradition and I saw they had choristers singing in the king’s coronation - the music department is almost unrivalled in the U.K..

Im sure things have changed now based on these responses but back in my day Campbell was (as memorably described by Samuel Beckett) for the cream of ulster - rich and thick! It was where well off parents sent their boys who didn’t pass the 11+.

Sullivan and Friends both have great reputations too.

Tbh the schools in NI are generally of a very high standard - I think it would be hard to go far wrong.

All the main ones are recommended here. OLSPK is very academic. Methody is huge and that put us off it. There's a new head though so things might be changing. Sport can be big in some schools. What are your son's interests?

South Belfast is lovely! No one will bother about the English accent.

Wow thanks all for the replies!
There's some incredibly useful information here and lots to get us started.
@Octocat excellent point re sch yr and not one I'd considered 😳, he has a late June birthday so will still fall into sch yr 10 NI.
He is academic and generally does well at school so hopefully that will help if we look at grammars
@MaloneMeadow good to know re accent and diversity, I'm probably being ridiculous but it was niggling a bit so that's nice to hear!
Once again thanks everyone for your replies, much appreciated!

All the good ones have been mentioned here already. We live close to CC but will most likely bypass it for Sullivan Upper if my children are academic enough.

My whole family have been Methody goers and have mixed reviews - I think it's grand if you are academic and not so grand if you are average or lack direction.

South Belfast is beautiful (as is East!!!). Whereabouts will you be working?

@irishapple I would have to agree with this re: Methody. They rely on having on having extremely high entry requirements in order to get the most academic pupils who don’t need as much support. Yes, DD and her friends have all done well, quite a few have gone on to Oxbridge and medicine etc but in most cases it was all very much down to natural ability rather than the school or the teaching that they’ve received there

Have a look at Rathmore (Catholic co-ed), it's on a straight bus/train route out of the city centre and is in South Belfast. Its selective, hard to get into but your child will have been educated outside NI so there's different entry criteria.
A lot of grammar schools in NI have coasted on their reputations for a long time.
Most kids I know (I've 3, at state and Catholic grammar, actually one is now in her first year at Uni) travel to school so don't let distance put you off. I know very few that go to their nearest post primary school. Also check fees - I noticed a big difference between the state and maintained sector.

Campbell is a fantastic boys school - very diverse and lots of extracurricular. I'd highly recommend

You've so many options in south/ east Belfast that are great. Have a look at the admissions criteria for each school in terms of transferring in. I've a niece at rathmore. The admissions criteria for each year is available on their website.

See, my eldest is at Sullivan and I'd have said exactly the same about it -they get good results because they take in the most able kids.

My friend has one boy at Sullivan and the other at Campbell, and she feels Campbell is much better at actually teaching them.

Good luck trying to get a place at any of the selective schools, whatever religion. My DS is a major high flyer academically with an excellent report from his school and an average of 124 in the CATs and not one school accepted him, with many not even acknowledging our application made this time last year. (Applied to Sullivan, Methody, RBAI, Grosvenor, Lagan College, OLSPK, Aquinas, Regent House, Wellington, Rathmore, Bangor Grammar and even Campbell as a last resort) So we stayed in England as the alternatives were farcical.

It’s hard to get a commitment from schools, you need to get accepted and on the waiting list to each individual school yourself. The education authority won’t help at all (well from my experience moving to primary) The grammars are overrun with able pupils and very very few have a catchment area but that has an upside in that you can apply to all over. There probably is an element of holding your nerve that they will get a place somewhere (which happened for us moving back, we got the ideal primary school two weeks before the start of term and had planned to send to one of the few preps in Belfast)

All of those schools mentioned have good and bad points, I’d say Rathmore is one of the most academic/results focused, St pats has a good mix of both, Methody is a big school where children can get lost but has some excellent extra curricular activities, INST is great at supporting boys who are academic and also finds alternative routes, st Mary’s love sport and help a child with academic ability achieve, st malacheys is all about supporting boys to achieve what they can and supporting strong mental health. I could go on about every school, an English accent will not be an issue anywhere. I would say Rathmore, Aquinas, Methody, INST, St Pats are most likely to get a space as they tend to have parents who work in the Belfast hospitals/Queens so have a bit more turnover of children due to family moving for work.

Good luck hope you get sorted!

Disappointing to hear about methody!

Campbell is definitely a government funded grammar school, by a quirk in their categorisation as a voluntary b category grammar rather than voluntary b they are able to charge fees on top. Some people assume it’s a private school, but it’s not. It would cost a lot more than £4K or less a year if it was.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_College

The EA were less than useless. Basically said that if we moved to where we planned to (Holywood, where I am from), they would assign a place at the closest school with room which could be Movilla in Newtownards, Dundonald High, Ashfield, Breda Academy or even more hilariously, Abbey Community College because as the crow flies (across the bloody lough), it was closer than Bangor Academy. Which didn’t have a space anyway. But we had to apply to each school individually and god knows what you would do if you weren’t from NI, not knowing what the different schools are like. I spoke to several of the heads, including my old school (OLSPK), but they all said there was no chance due to waiting lists and very stable cohort - one school even told me that Rockport or the Steiner School were my only real options - we visited Rockport and all hated it...

I work in education in England and was staggered at how the system works - here, if a student arrives (as often happens), they are found a place at a local school. I have a lot to do with exclusions (SENCO) and we move kids about all the time. So totally different to NI where it seemed at one point that DS would not have a school place for last September so we have decided to stay put and maybe try again after GCSEs.

I find it really hard to believe that absolutely no school would take him unless in the last 2/3 years things have drastically changed. At least from DD’s experience at Methody quite a few kids transferred in from abroad each year. Close friends coming home from living in the Middle East had no problem at all in getting their two DDs in, one was year 9 and the other going in to Sixth Form. Sullivan was the other option which they were both also accepted in to. The only reason they would’ve been denied was if they didn’t pass the entrance tests or the school wasn’t happy with previous reports and principal references that their old school had to provide.

Rockport is a fantastic school, obviously not accessible for all due to the cost but the teaching and pastoral support is second to none. They really bring out the best in each child and any families that I know + their kids have been extremely happy there, not a bad word to say about it. Certainly if we could afford it that’s where we would’ve sent DD!

The challenge every school had for my DS (who passed the entrance assessments for RBAI and Grosvenor as they were the only ones to say there might be a space) is that he is in the Covid year - now in 3rd form - and all the grammars are oversubscribed by disappointed people who have been on the waiting lists since P7 and want to move. It’s not like we had a choice to keep him at a local school while we waited for a place, we had a huge move to contemplate, house sale, the works and the uncertainty was not something I was prepared to risk. Not having a place - or being sent to a school we would never have chosen - were not options.

Rockport’s facilities were dire compared to the large, modern, well-equipped comprehensive he is at and their GCSE results really were poor, compared to what you would expect in England for roughly the same money (what are they actually spending all the mountains of cash on?!!) No offence, I was hoping it would be the answer to my problems and was all for the idea of fee paying, having done it for pre-prep and been at Penrhyn myself, but it was a huge shock to see the chasm in provision from a relatively similar independent in England. But given they have the monopoly on independent education in NI, I guess they can do what they want and nobody is going to challenge them.