Carrickfergus Grammar School

Carrickfergus Grammar describes itself as a selective controlled school, co-educational, on the North Road above the town, taking children from eleven to eighteen. It sits on the site of the old Thornfield Manor, looking down over Carrickfergus Castle and Belfast Lough. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The school is unusual in how openly it talks about the way it teaches. It says it is the first Research School in Northern Ireland for learning and teaching, and the first school in Northern Ireland to appoint a director of research. In September 2024 it hosted researchED Belfast with Queen's University, the first time that conference had come to Northern Ireland. For a parent, the practical version of this is that the school thinks about teaching method as a subject in its own right, and says so.

It is also direct about discipline in a way most schools are not. Its own words for the atmosphere it wants are "warm and strict", set alongside a zero-tolerance line on behaviour that disrupts learning and what it calls the good, old-fashioned principles of manners, honesty and hard work. The internal phrase is "no labels, no limits". The day starts at a quarter to nine with registration, runs on five periods of an hour and five minutes, and finishes at twenty-five past three, on a two-week cycle, so what your child has on a Tuesday alternates week to week. There are over forty-five clubs, including a showjumping team and a bridge club that plays an annual match against the staff. It suits a child who does better with clear expectations than with a light touch.