The learning centre is part of Monkton Primary

Based at Monkton Priory School in Pembroke, the centre helps support over 200 children from different Gypsy communities across the county.

It is part of a �750,000 building shared with the primary school.

Headteacher William Rees said it tackled "a traditional reluctance" for Gypsies to join the education system.

"We educate them here and they are integrated within our school community, and then we move them on to Pembrokeshire college to get a range of qualifications, and then assist them out into the workforce," he said.

The old centre was based in this temporary classroom

"We are catering for 210 Gypsy children right across Pembrokeshire and we have got staff working from here in 12 different schools.

"So it means, as far as the Gypsy community of Pembrokeshire is concerned, we have managed to take them forward in a sensitive way."

He said the facility was a better alternative to encouraging education than using "the heavy stick of education welfare officers and prosecution".

He added that the centre was multifunctional and was not just for Gypsies.

"It is going to be for the Gypsy community during the course of the day and during the evening we are opening it up for further education for adults."

Elizabeth Probert, from the Gypsy community, said she had encountered discrimination when she was younger, but children now were being brought into education.

More than 200 children are supported by the centre

"It was really hard - I was moved all around all the time," she said.

"In this community here, the Pembrokeshire people are a different class of people altogether towards us - they're brilliant."

The idea behind the project is that the new generation of Gypsies will not have the same problems but feel they have the freedom to learn.

Teacher Beverley Stephens said that space had been cramped in the old centre.

"We've not only got extra space, we have got beautiful lights, we have got computers - it is a different world."

She said the centre offered "a choice of education" as, historically, a lot of secondary age children from Gypsy communities did not attend school.

"We developed this project which brought Gypsy children back into education," she added, saying children could then move on to college and university.