SCHOOLS jointly managed by Catholic and Protestant Churches could operate even if every pupil belonged to the same faith, it has emerged.
Education minister John O'Dowd, pictured, has published guidance designed to support the establishment of new schools which would be jointly-managed.
The idea is the main Churches would come together to create a network of new 'integrated' schools. The minister has hailed this as a progressive step which would complement other shared education initiatives.
While the Department of Education has a statutory duty to promote integrated schooling, much of the recent focus has been on promoting different models of shared education.
Under a jointly managed model, the transferring and Catholic Churches would come together to form a group of trustees, which would nominate governors to sit on the school board.
An entirely new type of school would then be established, founded on common Christian principles. The two Churches would work together in an agreed way.
However it has emerged that unlike schools in the formally integrated sector, there will be no thresholds for particular religious backgrounds.
A school that transforms to integrated status must attract 30 per cent of its pupils from the minority community in its area.
With such targets not existing, there is potential for schools to be dominated by children of one faith.
While the department said it had not set religious thresholds, it added that its guidance specifically applied to a controlled and a Catholic maintained school coming together to "establish a jointly managed school with whole school and widespread community support".
"Consequently, having a school that is 100 per cent representative of only one religious background is not a likely scenario," a spokeswoman said.
"It is expected that such schools would be representative of both main communities in the make-up of the trustees, board of governors, teaching and non-teaching staff and pupils."
Meanwhile, the assembly education committee yesterday received a briefing from the Department of Education on the practicalities of establishing jointly managed schools.
Members said they struggled to see how this new model differed from existing integrated schools.
Committee chair Michelle McIlveen of the DUP said the only difference she could see was at governance level and added "it is still the education together of Protestants and Roman Catholic children".
The Alliance Party's Trevor Lunn added: "It is the same thing. What has come, completely out of the blue, is pretty much an integrated solution."
Department official Andrew Bell told members that demand for jointly-managed schools had come from communities and offered parents an alternative to formal integrated education.
"The fact there are communities keen on this issues, which us at the upper end of shared education, I think is a good thing," Mr Bell said.