A Co Fermanagh Catholic grammar school has agreed to pay £6,250 (€9,470) in compensation to a former pupil it excluded from class because she was pregnant.
Mount Lourdes in Enniskillen suspended Ms Margaret McCluskey when she was 16 and banned her from sitting her GCSE exams at the school.
Ms McCluskey, whose four-year legal battle over the expulsion ended yesterday, branded the school authorities "hypocrites", claiming that if she had an abortion no action would have been taken because no-one would have known she was pregnant.
It was only when a bump appeared after seven months that she was told to leave and to sit her exams in a local technical college instead. Once she gave birth, she was permitted to return to Mount Lourdes to study for her A-levels.
"As a mother I was allowed to go back to school. It was just the fact that the bump was showing. They wouldn't have suspended me from school; I would have been allowed to carry on as normal, had I had an abortion," she said.
In a settlement read before the County Court, the board of governors of the convent grammar school formally admitted liability and agreed the compensation sum. It also gave an undertaking to review its pastoral care programme to ensure no future pupils were treated less favourably because they were pregnant.
In a statement, Mount Lourdes said it regretted its actions contravened sex discrimination legislation, and the distress which resulted for Ms McCluskey.
It added: "We would like to point out that we made arrangements for Margaret to take her GCSE examinations in the most suitable venues with the best care available; we never planned nor indicated that she would be prevented from studying for A levels in the school; and indeed used our pastoral system to support her fully throughout her seven years in school.
"As with every pupil who passes through this school, we are pleased that Margaret has been highly successful in her academic work and we wish her well both now and in the future."
Ms McCluskey, now 21, is in her final year at Cambridge University. Her daughter, Judina, is a healthy four-year-old.
Speaking after the settlement, Ms McCluskey said she was "relieved" all schools in Northern Ireland would get the message that they would be held accountable if they acted in this way.
"Real Christian values are inclusive. When people are at their lowest point, you help them up, not push them out through the door," she said.
"It reminds me of the old days when girls that got pregnant were sent off to the workhouse. They're still stuck in that era."
Ms McCluskey says she has no doubt the expulsion affected her GCSE results. "I did some work at home and basically had to walk up and down to school early every day and get work handed out to me in a big brown envelope and then return it to the teachers to get it marked. That is how I carried on for the last month or so.
"I missed revision classes they were having and some of the hardest topics in science that were left to the end of term. I had to learn it all from books," she states.
"They didn't let me do my exams in the school, they made me do my exams in Fermanagh College of Further Education,"
However, she still believes Mount Lourdes is "a great school and it's got fantastic teachers who would bend over backwards to teach you, but it's still upholding those dubious values."
Ms Joan Harbison, chief commissioner of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland, which sponsored the action, said Ms McCluskey had shown "great courage . . . in pursuing this case so that things may be different for other young women in similar circumstances."
Ms McCluskey said she initially tried to keep her pregnancy a secret. But her mother became concerned for her welfare and decided telling the school was in her daughter's best interests.
While the school took no action at first, it eventually moved to suspend her. "[The headmaster] said: 'I'm suspending you Margaret.' I said: 'Put it in writing please'," she recalled. "I was very upset about that because they made special arrangements for other girls who had broken legs or had glandular fever in the past and they could have made special arrangements for me." Despite being thrown out of school and giving birth in the middle of her exams, Ms McCluskey passed eight of nine GCSEs. Her A-level grades earned her a place at Cambridge.