WALK through the door marked leabharlann and turn right. You find yourself in the Herman Good reading room, its walls lined with Jewish texts. For Stratford College, serendipitously located on Zion Road, in Rathgar, Dublin, is home to 170 students, 40 per cent of whom are Jewish.

The Lebanese cedars in the front garden and the redbrick mid-Victorian front belie the modern school which was completed in 1983 following a fire in 1981.

The grand tour, conducted by principal Colette O'Broin, is short. There are only six classrooms, a computer room with more than 30 networked computers, a colourful art room, a library and a number of seminar rooms. The first-year students in the saothorlann, the science lab, are busy watering their newly-planted begonia bulbs.

Behind the school, in place of the walled garden with the espaliered nectarines, there is now a national school catering for 120 pupils. It's possible to come to the school's kindergarten at three years of age and leave, 15 years later, with the Leaving Cert.

Stratford College was set up in the early Fifties to cater for the children of the Jewish community. A national school had been in existence since the Twenties.

The school no longer has a shaliach - a teacher of Jewish studies, who used to visit from Israel for a three-year period. The main reasons for the demise of this position, explains O'Broin, were the expense and the fact that some of the shaliachs did not have English when they first arrived. The Chief Rabbi now takes prayers while Rabbi Newman looks after exam classes.

About 20 years ago a decision was taken by then Chief Rabbi, David Rosen, to expand and include other denominations. Alan Green, school manager and past pupil, says the school has gone from strength to strength over the past 20 years.

An academic school, it offers a choice of five languages to Leaving Cert and is the only school in Ireland to teach Hebrew to this level. Students also have a choice of the three sciences, higher-level and ordinary-level maths, accountancy and economics, geography, history, classical studies, and art.

All students participate in Transition Year where they sample various subjects as well as activities such as public speaking, first aid, career guidance, skiing (on a dry slope), sailing and work experience. Extra-curricular activities for all students include football, squash and basketball.

It's an academic school, says O'Broin. "We run a tight ship" - but that does not mean that the school accepts only high achievers.

Last year, 13 of the 23 Leaving Cert students went on to study in traditional universities, while the remainder went to various further and higher education and training courses.

There is room for everyone at third level now, says the principal, citing the case of two former students who began with certificates in Rathmines College (now part of the DIT) and progressed to postgraduate study at the Smurfit Business School.

O'Broin has taught in Stratford College for the past 40 years and was appointed principal in 1978. "As well as being a huge responsibility it has been a great privilege to be principal of the only Jewish secondary school in Ireland," she says. " . . . to feel that the people who appointed me were happy to entrust the school to me - it's a rich treasury to pass on. That's why I have such a high regard for the position of Hebrew and Jewish studies and the maintenance of the ethos."

(She herself is not Jewish). The Jewish students gather for 20 minutes prayer each morning before school begins and the school calendar is predicated on Jewish feasts. The day E&L visits Stratford, it is the feast of Purim, a time of rejoicing. The smaller children have come to school in fancy dress and the Megilah - the story of Purim - has been read out. Everyone has eaten the haman tassen, the three-cornered bread filled with poppy seed.

In December, the candles in the Menorah are lit to mark Chanukah and the school closes for the Jewish New Year in September.

O'Broin will retire soon and a new principal will take over. She expects the changeover to be "seamless - the wheels are well oiled and in motion. The school has a superb staff and I would hope that the standards will be maintained and that the school would go from strength to strength." The ethos will be maintained, stresses Green.

As to a youthful-looking O'Broin's plans, she will divide her time between her home county of Roscommon and adopted Dublin. "I'm leaving to further other interests while I still have the health and vigour," she says.