Lagan College

Lagan College takes children of all abilities, which makes it unusual among the Northern Ireland schools that use the SEAG assessment. It is a grant-maintained integrated, co-educational school for eleven to eighteen year olds at Lisnabreeny, on the Castlereagh hills at the south-eastern edge of Belfast, with around 1,460 pupils. Some of its Year 8 places go on SEAG score and the rest are allocated without reference to it, so a strong score helps but is not the only way in.

It was started by parents. After a public meeting in February 1981 the school opened that September with twenty-eight pupils and six teachers in a scout activity centre, and calls itself Northern Ireland's first planned integrated school. It moved twice more before settling at Lisnabreeny, on National Trust land beside Cregagh Glen, which is unusually green ground for a school of this size on the edge of a city. It has held seven Green Flag Awards. The founding mission is still used word for word on the school's own pages: "to educate to the highest standards Catholics, Protestants and others of goodwill, of all abilities, together."

The all-ability part shows in how the timetable is built. Year 8 is split into eight form classes, and setting runs on two separate tracks, eight classes paced for literacy and eight for numeracy, so a child who is strong in English and weaker in maths sits in a different set for each. The school's stated reason for working this way is that brothers and sisters of different abilities should not have to attend different schools. It suits a child who would do better among a mixed intake than in a school where everyone arrived by the same route.