page_title: Portadown
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Portadown / Education
caption_attribution_description: English: Library, Church Street, Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, September 2009
context_page_description: Portadown is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about 24 mi southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population of about 22,000 at the 2011 Census. For some purposes, Portadown is treated as part of the "Craigavon Urban Area", alongside Craigavon and Lurgan.
  Although Portadown can trace its origins to the early 17th century Plantation of Ulster, it was not until the Victorian era and the arrival of the railway that it became a major town. It earned the nickname "hub of the North" due to it being a major railway junction; where the Great Northern Railway's line diverged for Belfast, Dublin, Armagh and Derry. In the 19th and 20th centuries Portadown was also a major centre for the production of textiles.
  Portadown is the site of the long-running Drumcree dispute, over yearly Orange marches through the mainly Catholic part of town, which has often led to violence. In the 1990s, the dispute intensified and drew worldwide attention to Portadown.
context_section_description: Portadown has (or had) a large selection of academic institutions, past and present. Today, schools in Portadown operate under the Dickson Plan, a transfer system in north Armagh that allows pupils at age 11 the option of taking the 11-plus exam to enter grammar schools, with pupils in comprehensive junior high schools being sorted into grammar and non-grammar streams. Pupils can get promoted to or demoted from the grammar stream during their time in those schools depending on the development of their academic performance, and at age 14 can take subject-based exams across the syllabus to qualify for entry into a dedicated grammar school to pursue GCSEs and A-levels.
caption: Portadown Library
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