St Paul’s High School is a maintained co-educational, 11-19 school which serves the mainly rural community in the four adjacent parishes; it is significantly over-subscribed for entry to year 8 and to post-16 study. The number of pupils enrolled in September 2023 is 1758. The school is situated in an area of significant rural deprivation. The proportion of pupils entitled to free school meals has risen significantly over the past three years and is now just under 40%. Around one-quarter of the pupils have been identified as requiring additional support with aspects of their learning. The school plays an active role in the Newry and Mourne area learning community and benefits from a shared education programme with two local controlled schools and a local maintained school. The school is a Catholic community committed to providing high quality education in an atmosphere of mutual respect where each individual is valued as an important member of the school family. The school values the personal, moral, social and spiritual development of each student, encouraging respect for self and others including the core values of truth, kindness, integrity and compassion. The Education and Training Inspectorate, in a general inspection in January 2016, rated the school’s overall effectiveness as having a ‘high level of capacity for sustained improvement’. This was reflected in a follow-up Sustaining Improvement Inspection in January 2019 which reported that the school ‘continues to demonstrate a high level of capacity to identify and bring about improvement in the interest of all the pupils’.