IN Northern Ireland, a total of 31 primary and second-level integrated schools and seven nurseries and three playgroups attached to primary schools, provide an alternative to Catholic (maintained) schools, and the state

(controlled) schools, which are viewed as the preserve of the Protestants.

Over 6,000 children - almost two per cent of the total school-going population - are now educated in the integrated sector, which has enjoyed significant expansion in recent years. Three new integrated schools, mostly at second-level, are opening each year.

"Parents now want complete integrated education for their children," according to Brendan Heaney, who is senior development officer with the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE). One primary and two second-level schools are scheduled to open this year, while three post-primary schools are proposed for 1997.

Unlike the multi-denominational schools in the South, integrated schools enjoy a "positive" Christian ethos. Ratios of Catholic and Protestant pupils, staff and school governors are kept within a 60:40 per cent limit. However, today the student ratios are, more likely to be 40 per cent Catholic, 40 per cent Protestant and 20 per cent "other" which would include Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses and atheists, Heaney says.

The schools follow the Northern Ireland curriculum - including religious education - but parents can also request denominational religious instruction for their children.

Lagan College, (current enrolment, 1,000) was the first planned integrated school to be set up in Northern Ireland in 1981 with 28 students. Its parent body, All Children Together, was formed in 1972 to lobby for legislative changes to enable Protestant and Catholic children to be educated together.

By 1989, 10 integrated schools had been established - all largely financed by donations from charitable trusts and foundations. It was only once the schools proved viable - that is after periods of two to three years - that the Department of Education agreed to pay all recurrent and 85 per cent of capital costs.

NICIE was set up in 1987 to act as the co-ordinating body for integrated schools. A major boost for the sector came in 1989, when under the Education Reform Order, integrated schools (excepting nursery schools which still receive no government funding) were awarded recurrent funding for books, salaries and running costs from day one.

The annual running costs of NICIE, which now employs 11 staff, are supported by the Department of Education to the tune of just under £400,000. But, claims Heaney, the popular perception that the sector is awash with cash is simply untrue.

"Initially schools have to rent, purchase or lease premises. Parents used to take out bank loans or mortgages for this. NICIE has been underwriting this borrowing since the 1991 establishment of the Integrated Education Fund - which currently stands at almost two-and-a-half million pounds and is made up of contributions from the European Commission, the Department of Education, the Nuffleld Foundation and the Rowntree Charitable Trust. Because of the recent acceleration of integrated education, the fund is now heavily overcommitted," he says.

In the past, many church leaders were vociferously opposed to integrated education, but nowadays, according to Heaney, "even the Catholic Church is lightening up on its views". However, critics still remain.

"Integrated education is a weapon to undermine Catholic education which has been the only source of advancement for the Catholic community in Northern Ireland," argues Father Denis Faul.

"The richer Catholics who were educated by the religious orders now send their own children to the big Protestant grammar schools like Methodist College and the Belfast Royal Academy." For parents whose children fail to gain admission to grammar school, integrated schools have a "certain cachet" and are seen as being preferable to the secondary modern or intermediate school - alternatives he says. Religion apart, "you won't get the full Irish culture - the language, the games, the history and the music - in integrated or Protestant schools," he says.

According to Faul many Protestant clergy are also opposed to, integrated schools, because they are causing the closure of small Protestant schools. And they fear that more moderate, ecumenically minded families are opting to send their children to integrated schools, leaving the" more hard-line Protestants without their leavening influence, he says. And just last month the Belfast Telegraph reported a "blistering attack" on integrated schools by the main Protestant Churches.

Meanwhile, integrated education is continually held up as a means of reducing inter-community strife in Northern Ireland. But according to Dr Dominic Murray, who is professor of peace studies at the University of Limerick and author of Worlds Apart - Segregated Schools in Northern Ireland, such claims are grossly overstated.

Segregated schooling exists in her countries and is not regarded as intrinsically divisive, he says. "Integrated schools cater for less than two per cent of the school-going population. If you want to use education to improve the conflict situation it makes more sense to concentrate your efforts on the other 98 per cent, and use education for mutual understanding (EMU)." However, "I'm not anti-integrated schools - I would want them for my own children because they offer a broader education," Murray adds.

Like their southern counterparts, integrated schools are accused of catering only to the affluent middle-classes. But Brendan Heaney refutes this. "In the early years they were definitely middle-class initiatives but we now have a broad social mix. Some 27 per cent of our pupils are in receipt of free school meals, which is the same for the country at large," he says. In some areas the children and grandchildren of paramilitaries on both sides are attending the same schools. Furthermore, integrated schools actively encourage parental involvement and parents from across the religious divide sit together on the boards of governors, he says.