St. Patrick's Academy, Dungannon

St Patrick's Academy is a co-educational Catholic voluntary grammar school on the Killymeal Road in Dungannon, with an approved enrolment of 1,320 and 189 places in Year 8. It began in 1891 as a boys' school, and from 1894 the Sisters of Mercy taught girls in a single room in the convent on Northland Row. Both moved to the Killyman Road in 1901, then in 1975 to a shared site on the Killymeal Road, where they still ran as two separate schools. They formally became one only in 2003, and the present building opened in 2018. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

The values are set out as an acrostic on the patron's name, PATRICK, running from partners in excellence through to keepers of faith and tradition, and the vision is given in English and Irish, Achieving Excellence Together, Le Chéile chun Feabhais. Break and lunch are staggered by key stage into three sittings each, so year groups eat in turn, and Year 8 is let into the canteen five minutes early at break. The till runs on fingerprints rather than cards, so a child on free school meals cannot be picked out at the counter, and parents can set a daily spend or block particular items.

The Year 8 induction programme is called Follow the Yellow Brick Road, and it opens with a day in June the school calls the Seal Scléipe, so children meet their classmates before term. Form classes are put together from what the school learns at online registration. Each new pupil is given a cara, a buddy from Year 13. On the first day the Year 8s have the building to themselves and are walked round it by senior prefects, and until half term their day finishes early so they get used to going home safely.