Enniskillen Royal Grammar School

If you are in Fermanagh and thinking about a grammar place, Enniskillen Royal is a grammar school to consider. It describes itself as an academically selective, co-educational, non-denominational voluntary grammar school, and it takes eleven to eighteen year olds, with just over nine hundred pupils and 130 places in Year 8. Entry is through the SEAG assessment. One thing to know before you visit: the school runs across two sites. Years 8 to 11 are at Algeo Drive and Years 12 to 14 at Cooper Crescent, so your child would start at one and move to the other partway through.

The school opened on 1 September 2016, from the amalgamation of Portora Royal School and Enniskillen Collegiate Grammar School. Its third site, on the shore of Lough Erne, is empty and being rebuilt, with the listed Portora House to be brought into the new building, though no completion date has been announced. The four houses were set up in 2017 and named after mountains you can see from the school, Belmore, Benaughlin, Cuilcagh and Trien. Families keep the same house, so a younger child joins the one an older brother or sister was in.

Rowing is what the school is best known for. The boat club works from the Portora Boat House on a quiet stretch of the River Erne and the governors have opened membership to pupils at other schools in the town. The day runs from 9.00 am to around 3.25 pm, with lunch split into two sittings so half the school is taught while the other half eats.