Belfast High School

Belfast High School is a grammar school: a co-educational, non-denominational voluntary grammar school founded in 1854. Despite what its name suggests, is not in Belfast! It sits on a thirty-two acre site on the Shore Road at Jordanstown, looking out over Belfast Lough, with about 930 pupils from eleven to eighteen. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

It began as the Pyper Academy, set up by John Pyper near Carlisle Circus in Belfast, which is where the name comes from. The school still works out of Ardilea House, the old house bought in 1953 and absorbed into the 1960s building, now used as the administration block. The four houses date from 1963 and each carries a symbol taken off the school crest, tied to an industry the city was built on. Boyd has the microscope, for science. Watson has a hand holding a sheaf, for agriculture and flax. Pyper has a ship, for Harland and Wolff. Storey has a loom, for linen.

Every Year 8 goes to the Ganaway activity centre, and it is the thing pupils mention first. The school calls it a well-established tradition that helps new pupils make friends and feel they belong, and a Year 9 quoted on the school's own site starts his account of the place with it. Year 8 also gets the building to itself for a morning in August before the rest of the school comes back. The school runs a ten-day timetable cycle, with five hour-long lessons a day, and Wednesdays finish thirty-five minutes earlier than the rest of the week. It suits a child who will throw themselves at the first term.