Education in northern Ireland is a sharply focused prism for sectarian politics, as recent events at the Holy Cross girls’ primary school in Belfast have made clear. The vast majority of children - around 95 per cent - continue to be educated in Catholic or Protestant schools, with segregation often starting at home and continuing in the system from the age of three. But movement in the peace process - combined with a report from the review body on post-primary education in the Six Counties - should herald big changes.

Lady Rosemary Salisbury (her husband is the schools management guru Sir Bob Salisbury) returned to her native Omagh earlier this year after 30 years in the English education system to take up the headship of Drumragh Integrated College. Her accent mellowed by years abroad - “they seem to think I’m English” - Lady Salisbury says an integrated school is the only kind she could join. “I’m passionate about integrated education, which is vital to the survival of Northern Ireland. It’s very frustrating that in England they’re trying to introduce more religious schools.”

Drumragh College, now in its seventh year, is housed in a wing of a mental hospital, an impressive if forbidding grey stone building on the edge of the town. Set up by parents and a handful of committed staff with just 68 children, the college now has almost 600 pupils. Plans for a purpose-built school on the site are in hand.

The job at Drumragh, says Mrs Salisbury (she dispenses with the title except for school marketing purposes), is in many ways similar to the one at her last school, King Edward VI in Retford, Nottinghamshire, where she was head for four years. There, the challenge was to turn around a “failing” school. Here, it is to improve one that is already doing quite well - in terms of exam results (44 per cent got five A*-C GCSEs last summer) and religious integration. Omagh pupils, she says, are little different from those in Nottinghamshire.

“The only difference is the accent. And there’s maybe a greater need to succeed.” She considers knowing the name of every pupil important, testing herself on school photos on her office wall in spare moments - and substituting a ubiquitous “darling” on the corridors if names fail her.

Her first actions have been on the discipline front, banning “all jewellery except watches”, and emphasising politeness and punctuality. She reports proudly a remark overheard by a teacher - one boy complaining to another that “you can’t get away with nothing now”. A similar tone is set in the staffroom.

Senior teacher and head of RE Michael McGowan says: “If you’re doing something well, it’s acknowledged. And if there’s something that needs to be said to you, it will be said privately. It’s non-threatening, but challenging. She listens to the staff but she’s not afraid of the tougher decisions.”

Experience from “King Eddie’s” is highly transferable, says Mrs Salisbury. “Staff asked me to lead them in tightening things up. I want to bring high standards and expectations, strong leadership, core values of equality of opportunity, dignity and respect,” she says, adding that she is “not lily-livered”.

She wants to deconstruct the streaming that pervades the school. A product of the multi-layered selective system - she went to a girls’ Catholic secondary modern - Mrs Salisbury describes her education as “a negative experience. It was made clear to us that we were failures and second-class citizens. It was a new school, and many of the nuns had only grammar school experience. Only a handful recognised that some of the girls were in fact quite bright.”

She was encouraged as a child by a lay teacher, Bernadette Grant, who developed her facility for speech and drama, and instilled self-belief. “That experience is what I am today,” she says. “I am passionate about children’s rights and I feel strongly that we as a profession must develop all the talents we can in a youngster, because we may be the only ones to spot it.” Her commitment to comprehensive education, and long experience of it in English schools, is a commodity in short supply in Northern Ireland, where there are no comprehensive schools other than the 17 integrated colleges, which take pupils of all abilities as well as any religion.

While the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) says 85 per cent of people in the 25 to 44 age group want integrated education for their children, others are passionately opposed to the idea. Drumragh pupils report indignantly that their teachers have to advertise the school at local supermarkets, as some Catholic primary schools will not grant them admission.

Northern Ireland’s education minister, Martin McGuinness, declared his support for comprehensive education immediately after his appointment in 1999. But while the post-primary review body’s main recommendation is an end to selection on academic grounds, it had no brief to look at an end to selection on grounds of denomination. “We’re concerned to ensure the ethos, mission and identity of all schools are protected,” says the body’s chairman, former Northern Ireland ombudsman Gerry Burns. “No school should be under any threat from our proposals.”

Choosing integrated education can be tough for parents and children. Joanne Little, 17, is studying English literature, geography and history. One former friend from her Protestant primary school refused to speak to her for six years after she opted for Drumragh. “It was hurtful,” she says. “I think it’s because we are a minority and people think we have to stick together.”

Mrs Salisbury concedes: “We do have enemies.” The result is that the school feels under pressure to be visibly excellent in every area, from exam results to pupil behaviour and dress. Numbers are down this year, and in Northern Ireland, as in England, funds follow pupils. “To compete, we have to be squeaky clean. We can’t get away with anything.” Although non-sectarian, the school has a strongly Christian ethos, “as parents would want”.

While many pupils or parents choose integration on principle, some are motivated more by a desire to escape the local secondary modern. For teachers, too, motivation varies. Some, such as head of history Jimmy Jackson-Ware, are highly committed to comprehensive, mixed education. “I wouldn’t have considered anything but an integrated school,” he says. In teaching history, the most painful issues in Northern Ireland are constantly up for discussion. On the walls of the one-time wards, now classrooms, he has displays on nationalism and unionism. “It’s no good hiding it,” he says. “We’ve got to face it all and talk about it all and decide what we want to celebrate and what we don’t.”

But degrees of commitment vary, says Cliodhna Scott-Wills of NICIE, who runs teacher training for those new to the integrated sector. “They have to become aware of their own prejudices and sectarian ideas,” she says. “They can’t teach effectively in an integrated school if they haven’t faced the issues in themselves, and no one who comes from Northern Ireland is immune from that.”

Teachers who opt for jobs in the integrated sector can face career difficulties when it comes to moving on; some believe experience in an integrated school is a hindrance to promotion. “Once you belong to the integrated sector, they’re reluctant to take you back,” says one. “It’s as if you’ve been tainted by the other ethos. It’s not legal, but it’s the real world of Northern Ireland.”

Children appear to have less trouble with integration than politicians or teachers. While there is the odd incident at Drumragh - a ruler with IRA graffiti on it, a Protestant child refusing to enter a Catholic chapel for harvest festival - most pupils say integration is not an issue, inside school at least. “If Rangers play Celtic there might be a few rows, and on Ash Wednesday it’s spot the Catholic day,” says Sandy Scobie, 17. “But everyone takes it as a joke.”

“I’m learning new things, for instance about the Easter Rising, from Catholic pupils,” says sixth-former Joanne Little. “Our history department decided we know who we are, we know about the Troubles and we’re not afraid to sit down and talk about it. It’s helped me find out a lot about my history as a person.”

One difficulty older pupils have is in socialising together. Most bars and nightclubs, like schools, are segregated in Omagh, as in the rest of Ulster. “It’s a bit difficult in the town,” says Brendan McCaul, 18. “I don’t think it’s right the way in the staunch Catholic pubs they’re bad-mouthing Protestants all the time, because of what they see on the television.” Undeterred, Drumragh pupils alternate between Catholic and Protestant pubs and clubs - and are careful about disclosing which neighbourhood they’re from.

Despite the years abroad, local connections endure for Rosemary Salisbury. She points through her study window to a boy pupil who is her second cousin, and has just entered the sixth form. A brother and sister still live locally, and former mentor Bernadette Grant influenced her life for a second time by sending the details of the Drumragh job as Mrs Salisbury was recovering from surgery for breast cancer. She describes her illness as “not life-threatening, but life-changing”, and postponed radiotherapy to come for the interview in Omagh in March this year. Sir Bob, who is semi-retired, likes the fishing, and she has to remind herself to look at the beautiful scenery.

Her mission is to make the school the best in the town. “We have the staff, we have the kids, and we’re more enlightened.”

What’s what in Integrated Education, a booklet produced by the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, is available free fromNICIE, 44 University Street, Belfast BT7 1HB. Tel: 028 9023 6200; www.nicie.org.uk