Educating Catholic and Protestant children together in the North could help break down sectarian attitudes, university researchers have said.
A report published yesterday suggests integrated education could help establish a new political centre ground. The first integrated school in the North opened 25 years ago and there are now 17,000 children in that sector.
The findings, published by Queen's University Belfast, combine data from a range of public attitude surveys dating over six years.
The authors, Prof Bernadette Hayes, Prof Ian McAllister and Lizanne Dowd, say the evidence points to a lessening of hard sectarian attitudes among those who have been to integrated schools.
Their report, In search of the middle ground: Integrated education and Northern Ireland politics, claims that Protestants who attended an integrated school were less likely to say they were British or unionist, however they were not willing to adopt an Irish or nationalist identity.
The data also confirms that Catholics educated in the integrated sector were less likely to support a united Ireland.