Ballymena Academy

If you are looking at grammar schools in mid-Antrim, Ballymena Academy is usually the first one local families weigh up. It is a co-educational, non-denominational voluntary grammar school for eleven to eighteen year olds, set in around eighty acres of parkland on the Galgorm Road, close enough to walk into the centre of Ballymena. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment, and the school takes 176 pupils a year into six tutor groups.

The school was established in 1828 and moved to the Galgorm Road site in the early 1970s. Its history page notes that the front door of today's school stands roughly where the front door of the old house at Knocknanure once stood. The day begins at 8.55 with registration, and assembly follows at 9.05 in the Girls' Gym, every morning of the week. The school says collective Christian worship is part of those daily assemblies. From the sixth form centre and the playing fields you can see Slemish away to the east.

New pupils get more than a form tutor. Each Year 8 tutor group is assigned two members of staff and four sixth form mentors, and Year 8 shares its lunch period with Year 9 only, so the youngest children are not queueing alongside eighteen year olds in their first term. Year 8 also takes a skills course the school calls Roots and Wings. Its own description of itself is "a large modern school" that is "friendly and caring", with staff who are "demanding but fair". It suits a child who is ready for a big school and will take up what is on offer, rather than one who needs drawing out first.