St Dominic's High School

St Dominic's is a Catholic grammar school for girls on the Falls Road in west Belfast, taking girls from Year 8 to Year 14, with around a thousand pupils. It was founded in 1870 by the Dominican Sisters of Cabra, at the invitation of the Bishop of Down and Connor, and remains under the trusteeship of the Dominican order. It welcomes girls from all faith traditions. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

There is no whole-school lunch break. Lunch is a timetabled period taken in three sittings by age, so Years 8 and 9 eat while the rest of the school is still in lessons, Years 10 and 11 go next, and the senior years last. At any one sitting, two-thirds of the school is in class. The dining room is named the Siena Dining Room, after Catherine of Siena, who was a Dominican. The day runs from ten to nine to ten past three on ten short periods.

New pupils are looked after by older ones in a way that is more structured than most. Every Year 8 girl is given a named Year 14 buddy, and on top of that each class from Year 8 to Year 11 has three Year 14 prefects attached to it who come to registration and lead personal development lessons. The prefect roles are specialised rather than general, with class prefects, wellbeing prefects, subject prefects and prefects specifically for newcomers. There is no house system. One small thing a girl will notice: the school tie is worn to Year 12, and in the sixth form it is dropped for a striped blouse, so you can tell a sixth former across a corridor.