Larne Grammar School

Larne Grammar is a co-educational, non-denominational voluntary grammar school on Lower Cairncastle Road in Larne, and it is a small school by grammar standards, with 735 pupils from eleven to eighteen in four form classes a year. It makes the size part of its own argument, saying the scale and the pastoral system give it a family atmosphere. The grounds look out over the town, Larne Lough and Islandmagee. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The school was founded in 1886 by Sir Edward Coey and John Crawford, and opened to pupils on 10 April 1888. The trustees had secured the site the year before on terms the school still quotes: an annual rent of one shilling a year, for ten thousand years. It was a boys' boarding school for its first fifty years and became co-educational in 1935, when it amalgamated with Larne Intermediate School, the town's girls' school. A Victorian ship's bell, cast in 1860, stands in a garden on the campus and is the picture on the front of the prospectus.

New pupils are looked after by someone whose job is specifically that. The head of Year 8 specialises in induction and works with the feeder primaries, and there is an introduction evening in June once places are accepted, where families meet the year head, the school nurse and the principal before the summer. There is an induction day at the start of term, and Year 8 classes are assigned class prefects alongside their tutor, with a wider mentoring scheme run by staff and sixth formers. It suits a child who would rather be somewhere they are noticed than somewhere large.