St. Michael's College

St Michael's College is a Catholic voluntary grammar school for boys on the Chanterhill Road in Enniskillen, set on a hill at Drumclay above the town, with just over 700 pupils. It was founded in 1903, run at first by the Presentation Brothers from a site in the middle of Enniskillen, and moved out to its present grounds in 1957, when the Bishop of Clogher designated it a diocesan college. The building that opened then was designed for 160 boys and had boarding places for about sixty. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The motto is Orare, Studere, Agere, to pray, to study, to act, and the school explains each in turn: studying means more than applying yourself to books, and acting means giving back to others what prayer and study have produced. The crest carries the better detail. The open book on it has nothing written in it, and the school's explanation is that the book is the boy's own life, to be filled in by what he does with it. The same crest is laid as a mosaic in the floor of the building.

The shape of the day is unusual. There are ten periods of thirty-five minutes, registration at nine, and the last bell at a quarter past three, followed by five minutes given over to attendance and to reflecting on the day. There is no afternoon break. Lunch runs in three sittings through the middle of the day to keep the queues short, and Year 8 eats in the first of them, alongside Year 14. Ties are clip-on for every year group, right through to Year 14, a point the uniform page makes three times over. Chips, the canteen notes, are a treat once a week, usually on a Friday.