Banbridge High School

Banbridge High School is a secondary school located in Banbridge, County Down, Northern Ireland. It is within the Southern Education and Library Board area.

The school was opened in 1957 with an initial enrolment of 420 pupils.[1] A new building was officially opened by the Duchess of Kent in March 1997. In 2002 the school gained a Schools Curriculum Award. The school had a total enrolment of 590 pupils and 48 staff by July 2006. As of 2017, the school has 504 students with 40 teachers.[1]The latest principal Andrew Bell joined the school in 2009 and left at Halloween in 2020 during the Covid19 crisis. Every cloud has a silver lining. In 2014 the school was investigated by the Southern Education and Library Board and the PSNI because of staff complaints about religious 'hate speeches' in repeated assemblies and the ready availability to children of the religious hate literature booklets, 'Chick Tracts'. These investigations were the first of their kind in the history of Northern Ireland education. The PSNI were given examples of this 'Chick Tracts' literature found in the school, stamped with 'Compliments of Banbridge Baptist Church' and full of vile anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, anti-gay, Anti-AIDS sufferers and pro-suicide cartoons, some showing children hanging themselves. Front page articles featured all this in the local and national press. The Press Complaints Commission threw out all 6 complaints raised by BHS Principal Mr Bell against the Irish News journalist, Simon Doyle. They found no evidence whatsoever of inaccuracies or wrong information in the published articles.