Dominican College

Dominican College is a Catholic girls' grammar school in Fortwilliam Park in north Belfast, taking girls from eleven to eighteen, with an approved enrolment of 1,050 and 150 places in Year 8. It is one of the larger girls' schools in the city. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

It began in 1930 when the Dominican Sisters bought a house called Walton in what was then one of the smarter parts of north Belfast. The preparatory school opened that September, the foundation stone of the grammar school wing was laid in 1933, and the grammar school was formally recognised the year after. The campus then grew by buying up the houses next door, one at a time, between 1946 and 1965, each named after a saint. The assembly hall followed in 1963 and the College Chapel of the Holy Rosary in the mid-1960s. The Sisters moved out to their own house in 1998 and handed the school to lay management, though they remain its trustees, and a new purpose-built school opened on the site in 2006.

What a girl does outside lessons here looks different from most Belfast grammars. Camogie and Gaelic football sit alongside hockey, netball and tennis. Alongside the Duke of Edinburgh there is the President's Award, the Irish state equivalent, and the Pope John Paul II Award, and there is a St Vincent de Paul group and a faith group the school calls Believers. Year 8 induction starts in June, before the summer, with sixth formers acting as mentors and prefects for the new intake.