Castle High School, Belfast
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Castle High School is an English-medium secondary school located in Fortwilliam Park Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is a non-selective state controlled co-educational school for pupils aged from 11 to 16. It is within the Belfast Education and Library Board area. Castle High School should be the local school for children from all over North Belfast (including the Shore Road, Mount Vernon, Tigers Bay, Shore Crescent, the Wider Shankill Area and Ballysillan). Visit the school website at http://www.castlehigh.ik.org for more information and read just how good the school is and how good it can be with your support.
There have been many improvements in the school over recent years with improvements to various departments including Technology & Design, Science, the P.E. Dept with a health and fitness suite, the Art department and also the Home Economics department. There are also excellent facilities in the Drama and E-Media Suite's. Coming soon there will hopefully be major upgrades to the schools IT Suites. Castle High provides excellent facilities and resources along side excellent teaching and support staff to allow each young person to achieve their best.
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[edit] Castle High on YouTube
Recently a video was spotted on YouTube about Castle High. It takes the form of a 2 minute slideshow on why parents should send their pupils to the school. Check it out *Here.
[edit] School Inspection Reports
The last official published Inspection Report gave Castle High an excellent review. There was a more recent inspection in January 2007 and inspection gave another excellent review yet again! These good inspection reports confirm that Castle High is a very good choice for parents to send their children too. Compare that to inspection reports from other local High Schools which are far from perfect! Not sure? visit the Department of Education website and see for yourself!! http://www.deni.gov.uk
[edit] Social Enterprise Masterclass
Recently a group of Year 12's from Castle attended a Social Enterprise Masterclass at the Holiday Inn in Belfast. The Year 12's stole the show and came out on top beating other well known and more established schools like the Boys Model and the Girls Model. In fact Castle High did not just beat everyone else, they trounced everyone else!!
[edit] Ballymena Music Festival
Also in recent weeks Castle High had representation at the Ballymena Music Festival. A group of Year 8 & 9 pupils who form Castle High's African Drumming group performed at the festival along side Grove Primary School and recieved much praise from the judges.
[edit] Castle High Webshop
A short while ago a new feature was set up in order to help raise money for school fund. The Castle High Webshop is a website that has links to over 100 retail outlets. You can buy everything from cds, dvds, you can book your holiday, apply for credit cards and much much more. The webshop can be found at http://www.buy.at/castlehigh. For example, log on to the webshop and use the links to go to play.com. Buy a cd, dvd or a gadget and Castle High gets commission! In many cases the prices on from the webshop are cheaper than in the high street plus there are special offers from time to time too. Help Castle High raise funds, visit the webshop now!!
[edit] Oliver
On 12th January Castle High entertained a packed assembly hall with their School Production of Oliver. It was a tremendous success with every pupil who was acting giving a performance of a lifetime. Everyone pulled together to make it possibly the best play the school has ever done.
[edit] Grandparents entertainment afternoons
Castle High is quite possibly the only school in Belfast that puts on a show specifically for the grandparents of the pupils. In recent years they have performed Bingo!, 'Definitely Not Strictly Come Dancing' and The G Factor. The G factor was the school's version of the X Factor where pupils would perform in front of judges; 1 Teacher, and 2 Grandparents! The special guest that day was Phillip Magee who was in the X Factor itself not long before.
The most recent Grandparents Afternoon took on the usual format of songs, dances and poem readings. The highlight of the day has to be 5 boys performing YMCA with the audience joining in too.
- Address: Fortwilliam Park, Belfast, BT15 4AR
[edit] History
Castle High is situated in the wooded grounds of the former Dunlambert Estate. Within the 8 acre grounds are the Celtic and Anglo Norman remains of the original Dun or Fort flanked by a prehistoric souterrain. This fort was built by the Queen's Favourite, Lord Essex in Elizabethan times. The arches and pillars at each end of Fortwilliam Park are what is left of the grand entrances built by George Langry who owned the estate in the early 1800s.
Dunlambert Secondary School opened on the 1st September 1958 with an enrolment of 720 boys from all over North Belfast. The numbers of pupils reached 960 in 1962 and the following year numbers peaked 1,000. The founding Principal of Dunlambert was Samuel Lynn.
On the 7th October 2004 Dunlambert held a reunion at Castle High School with a special premier screening of a documentary produced by a former pupil of Dunlambert on 'Parkie' which focused on his years as a teacher and captured some poignant moments of his return to Dunlambert and to the classroom where he used to teach.
Castle High School opened its doors to pupils in 1985 as a result of the merger between Dunlambert Secondary School for Boys, Graymount Secondary School for Girls and Mountcollyer.
