Quaker school best in Northern Ireland
Friends School, Lisburn, named the top secondary school in Northern Ireland
Friends School, Lisburn, has been named the top secondary school in Northern Ireland in the prestigious Sunday Times Schools’ Guide. It was founded in 1774 and has grown from a boarding school for thirty Quaker children to a thriving state grammar school with 980 students in the senior school and a preparatory department of 150 pupils.
Friends School won the award for what the judges said was its ‘development of the whole child… where everyone is coaxed to perform to the maximum of their abilities’. The school was also placed second in Northern Ireland in the examination results section – proving that it is possible to combine a Quaker ethos of concern for ‘the uniqueness of each child’ with academic excellence. It was 44th across the whole of the United Kingdom. As a state grammar school, pupils do not pay school fees but are admitted on the basis of a transfer test taken at the age of 11.
Alastair McCall, editor of the Sunday Times Schools’ Guide: Parent Power, said: ‘Northern Ireland has long had a disproportionately larger number of the best schools in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Friends School, Lisburn, is one of the most exceptional of them. It combines high levels of academic attainment, which stands its students in great stead no matter what they go on to achieve, with a Quaker tradition that ensures that they leave school firmly grounded and with a sense of their place in the world and their responsibility to make it a better place.’
Lisburn Quaker Meeting House is situated in the grounds of Friends School, as part of the preparatory department, and the school is used for Ireland Yearly Meeting when it is held in Northern Ireland.