Rainey Endowed School

Rainey Endowed is a co-educational voluntary grammar school in Magherafelt, with 786 pupils and an admissions number of 100 in Year 8. It has been on the same ground since 1713, which makes it one of the oldest schools in Northern Ireland still on its founding site. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

It was built with money left by Hugh Rainey, an iron smelter and merchant in the Magherafelt district, and the school still states his aim in his terms: to teach pupils from all social and religious backgrounds, and to give back to the community. The land was leased from the Salters' Company, one of the London livery companies granted estates in Ulster, and the school took its motto from them too. Sal Sapit Omnia, which the school renders as Salt Savours All, is the Salters' own.

The day starts with assembly at ten to nine and registration after it, rather than the other way round, and runs on six periods to half past three. The four houses, Parker, Salters, Walker and Calvin, were relaunched in September 2018, and the competition is not what you would expect from a three-hundred-year-old school: alongside the sport there is a bake-off, a quiz, debating, poetry, orienteering, photography, film, Lego and rocketeering. House captains are appointed in every year group, not just the sixth form. The school also runs a kindergarten in Hangzhou, China, opened in 2019, and its Year 8 pupils make videos of school life in Northern Ireland for the children there.