St. Malachy's College

St Malachy's College is a Catholic grammar school for boys on the Antrim Road in north Belfast, and it calls itself the oldest Catholic post-primary school in Ulster. It was founded in 1833, on the feast of St Malachy, by the Bishop of Down and Connor, and has been on the same eleven acres ever since. Its motto is Gloria Ab Intus, glory from within, and its pupils and former pupils are called Malachians. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The college is reached by a tree-lined avenue off the Antrim Road, which runs up to a front quadrangle the boys simply call the quad, and the buildings on three sides of it date from the 1860s. The school's own line is that for generations pupils have made their way along the avenue following in the footsteps of those who came before them. The chapel and the college tower went up in 1882, and for the centenary in 1933 the school commissioned thirty-two stained glass windows from the Harry Clarke studio, installed over the following four years. The college is a listed building.

Two things about the teaching are worth knowing. Every pupil takes two languages at Key Stage 3, chosen from French, Spanish and Irish, and Year 8 gets a library period every fortnight set aside for reading for enjoyment. The other is unusual: the college timetables some GCSE classes outside the school day, in government and politics and in statistics, so a boy can pick up an extra GCSE. The school is organised as three schools within one, junior, middle and senior, each with its own head, rather than into houses.