Class of '83 reunion for girls at Newport High School

The school, on Wellington road, in Newport, saw 22 of its former schoolgirls walk through its doors for a class of '83 reunion.

Sarah McAleer, who organised the reunion with two other former pupils, said it took detective-like work to track down her fellow school peers.

"We were tracking people down in very diverse ways," she said.

"Social media was a big help with platforms such as Facebook and Linked In but we used everything in between – we used snail mail, old addresses of people that we found and friends and family that we thought might still have contact with them.

"There was a lot of detective work that went into finding everyone."

There were 22 people from a school year of just 36 that attended the reunion.

The group were accompanied around a tour of the school with the deputy headteacher from 1983, their form teacher and three other teachers from that year, as well as the current headteacher.

"I don't get to come back to Newport as often as I should and I can already see there's been a lot of changes both with the town and the school," she added.

"I've seen aerial photos from then and now, and the school has expanded greatly.

"Our old hockey pitches have been built on and the school roll of pupils has increased massively."

The reunion saw girls from all over the country return to Newport.

Currently, 35 years after leaving Newport Girls High School, Mrs McAleer now owns her own business in Glasgow.

The 53-year-old has been living there since 1991 and says the reunion came from a similar event held by former pupils at Adams Grammar School, now Haberdasher's Adams School.

"I saw an Adams Grammar reunion photo on social media in February and I along with a couple of others took it upon ourselves to instigate our reunion," she added.

"I'm absolutely buzzing that it has all come together now. We've started a group of 40 people on a social media chat, with some living in Australia, Spain and Norway to name a few.

"We've been invited to Spain as one of the girls owns a restaurant there, so the plan now is to arrange another reunion when we can."

Following the tour through their old school rooms, the reunion group made their way to The Bridge Inn for food and drink.