Thornhill College

Thornhill College is a Catholic girls' grammar school on the Culmore Road in Derry, taking 200 into Year 8 each year against an enrolment number of 1,410. It was established by the Sisters of Mercy, and the founder of that order, Catherine McAuley, is still quoted around the school: we must strive to do ordinary things extraordinarily well. The vision is three words, Belonging, Believing, Becoming, and the motto is Thy Kingdom Come. Entry is at Year 8 through the SEAG assessment.

In May 2000, while the new school building was going up, a Neolithic settlement was found on the site. It turned out to be a complete one, houses inside a wooden palisade, with flint tools, pottery, arrowheads and beads, and room for perhaps fifty people. It is the earliest known settlement of its kind along the Foyle, and one of the tools found there seems to have come from the Lake District. The school moved its car park so the remains could stay where they were, and a sculpture unveiled in 2008 displays some of the finds.

The day starts later than most, registration at a quarter past nine and the last bell at twenty to four, ten lessons of thirty-five minutes with lunch taken in two sittings. The canteen is called Sláinte and runs a pre-order service: orders go in by half past nine in the morning through a form the girls reach from a QR code in their planner. Year 8 arrives through a summer school of two days at the end of August, everything from cooking to geography games, and each form class is given a Year 8 buddy who walks them to lessons and shows them where to go at break.