Our Lady and St Patrick's College

Our Lady and St Patrick's College, known locally as Knock, is a diocesan co-educational Catholic voluntary grammar school on the Gilnahirk Road in east Belfast, with around 1,300 pupils and 190 places in Year 8. It draws from south and east Belfast, North Down and Ards. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The college in its present form dates from 1985, when a boys' school on this site merged with Sacred Heart of Mary Grammar School in Holywood and went co-educational. For years afterwards it was short of room and taught out of about thirty temporary mobile classrooms. That ended in March 2011, when all teaching moved into a new twenty-five million pound building on the eighteen acre site. There is an oratory on the campus, and the motto is Gratias Agamus, let us give thanks.

The school day is later and longer than most, and the school publishes it to the minute. Doors open at eight, registration is at twenty past nine, classes start at half nine and the last bell goes at 3.34 pm. Lunch is split, with the junior years eating from ten to one and the seniors from twenty-five past. Sports sessions run from eight in the morning and start again at 3.35 pm, a minute after the day ends. New pupils get a tutor who runs the induction programme, and on top of that Year 13 students are assigned to each Year 8 tutor group in groups of four and meet the class every week or two. There is no house system.