published in their honour. A memorial at the top of the main staircase records the names of the six O.S. killed in the Boer War. School organisation Playroom system Unlike most English public schools, Stonyhurst is organised horizontally by year groups (known as playrooms) rather than vertically by houses, although the girls are also split into junior and senior houses. Each playroom has an assigned playroom master, with each cohort moving through the playrooms, having a sequence of playroom masters (rather than a single housemaster). The college has the following playrooms, following the Roman order of learning: Lower Grammar Playroom ('LG' 13–14) Grammar Playroom (14–15) Syntax Playroom (15–16, GCSE Year) Poetry Playroom (16–17) Rhetoric Playroom (17–18) During the school's history the following playrooms or years have also existed: Philosophy Upper Syntax Humanities Upper Grammar Middle Grammar Lines In addition to the horizontal division of the school into playrooms, there is also a vertical grouping which cuts through the year groups, the "lines", and is used mostly for competitive purposes in sport and music. The Lines and colours are as follows: Campion (Red) (named after St Edmund Campion) St Omers (Yellow, though Brown for sporting attire) (named after St Omer, the town the school was founded in) Shireburn (Green) (named after the Shireburn family which built Stonyhurst) Weld (Blue) (named after Thomas Weld who donated Stonyhurst to the Jesuits) Notable events in the school year The Ascensio Scholarum, inherited from the College of St Omer, in its present form, is the opening address of the headmaster at the beginning of the year to the entire school gathered in the Academy Room. Previously, it was a formal transition for pupils from one playroom to the next at the beginning of the year, which involved a pupil from each year announcing to the playroom of the year below them that the next playroom had been vacated by the senior pupils. The students and their belongings would then move up to their next playroom. "Great Academies" takes place annually at the end of the first half of the summer term. Although different in its present form, it is a continuation of a tradition begun at St Omers, with the first taking place at Stonyhurst on 6 August 1795. Today, it is an occasion when the school is on display – there are exhibitions, musical performances, the school play, sporting events, as well as prize-giving