Lecale Trinity Grammar School

Lecale Trinity is the newest school on this site. It opened in September 2024 in Downpatrick, and it describes itself as an eleven to nineteen co-educational, all-ability voluntary grammar school in the Lasallian Catholic tradition. All-ability is the word that matters for how you prepare. Only part of the Year 8 intake is decided on the SEAG assessment, and the rest is allocated by which primary school a child attends, so a strong score helps some families and not others.

It was made by putting three schools together: St Patrick's Grammar School and De La Salle High School, both Lasallian, and St Mary's High School, from the Mercy tradition. All three are written into the new school rather than tidied away. The crest is dated 2024 and carries the motto Omni Puero Fides, which the school renders as Faith In Every Child. The twelve form classes are named after saints chosen by the school's own year group leaders, and three of them, St Patrick, St Mary and St John Baptiste, name one predecessor school each.

The practical thing to know before you visit is that the school runs on two campuses, split by age. Years 8 and 9 are on the Mercy campus and Years 10 to 14 on the Lasallian campus, so a child starting at eleven spends two years in one place and then moves. The school says it intends to bring everything onto the Lasallian campus once capital funding allows, but publishes no date. Both sites run the same day, nine until twenty past three, on eleven short periods, with lunch timetabled as a numbered period that falls differently for each year group.