On a winter's evening in February 1996, All Children Together, the original group campaigning for shared Catholic-Protestant schools, held a public meeting in the mainly Protestant town of Newtownards in north Co Down. Out of that meeting came a group of local parents intent on starting an integrated second-level school in their area.
Pointing out that many children from the area were already travelling to east Belfast every day to go to Lagan College, they moved fast. By the following August they had lodged a proposal to start a school with the South Eastern Education and Library Board. By September they had a list of 450 parents expressing preliminary interest in sending their children to the proposed Strangford College.
They also ran into some strong opposition. North Down's mainly unionist councillors objected to an integrated college taking public funding away from the state schools in Bangor, the area's main town. The local MP, Robert McCartney, took a delegation from existing schools, both state and Catholic, to meet the Education Minister at the time, Michael Ancram, to express their opposition.
Last February they were turned down for funding by the Department of Education, which said it could not see them reaching the required ratio of 30 per cent of Catholic children in such a Protestant area. They insist that of the 100 children they needed to get funding, 50 per cent were Protestant, 30 per cent were Catholic and 20 per cent came from other religious backgrounds.
Despite this blow, the parents decided to open the following September anyway. With help from the Integrated Education Fund - set up by the EU, the British Government and charitable trusts to support integrated education - and the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE), 67 pupils were able to start last month in temporary classrooms in the village of Carrowdore in the middle of the Ards peninsula.
A summer outing for children last year had led to them to renting a field beside a castle in the village. The owner, a businessman and head of Rotary International in Northern Ireland, later agreed to lease them a walled garden in which to put their mobiles.
The chairman of the new school's board of governors, Michael McAvoy, speaks for many when he says: "In this area Protestant children still grow up not having a Catholic friend or any significant association with Catholics. As we all know, not knowing someone from a different tradition in Northern Ireland doesn't stop young people having opinions about them. I see Strangford College as an essential part of the change process necessary in our society if we are to have a peaceful and prosperous future."
