SCHOOL PRINCIPALS have added their voices to the call for the extension of maintenance grants to students in Post Leaving Certificate colleges.

The President of the Association of Principals of Vocational Schools and Community Colleges, Josephine O'Donnell, says the denial of grant aid to PLC students represents a "grave injustice".

Her comments follow similar criticisms of the current system at the recent congress of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, when TUI members supported a call for the extension of ESF grants to PLC students.

"Students who choose PLC courses are being financially discriminated against in relation to their peers who are doing similar courses in RTCs," O'Donnell says.

About 18,000 students are currently engaged in PLC courses of study and, for a number of years, PLC students have been campaigning for a restructuring of the grants scheme. The Department of Education has continually resisted efforts to alter the scheme to favour PLC students, principally because it refuses to recognise PLC courses as third level options.

The association is particularly anxious that the situation should be examined before the first group of students to complete the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme leaves the system in 1997.

"For this first group of graduates their only route of progression to further study is through the PLC sector and they, therefore, do not have the option of applying for those courses in the RTCs which do not attract grants," O'Donnell says.

The new Higher Education Grants scheme is due to be published next month, but it seems unlikely that there will be any movement on the PLC issue. Equally unlikely is progress on the catch 22 situation affecting mature students applying for a grant.

Under the current system, mature students who apply from their parental address are classified as dependent and their parents' income is taken into account. If they apply from their college address, most qualify for the "adjacent" rate of payment only.

Prior to 1995, the address at which a mature student was normally resident the previous October was used as the basis for a grant assessment. The system was standardised from 1925-96, leading to the current situation - generally regarded as unsatisfactory by student leaders.

In fact, the only way a mature student can qualify for a full maintenance grant is to rent a house more - than 15 miles from their college, which is impractical; or to maintain two residences and apply from the address of the one which is further away, in which case the student in question would need to be so wealthy that a grant should be out of the question anyway.

In response to a recent Dail question, the Minister for Education said that "to award the non adjacent rate to independent mature students irrespective of their address would in effect involve creating a new category within the grant scheme. This would in turn be likely to lead to demands that this category be applied to all students." She estimated that this would lead to additional expenditure of £11 million.