Lesley O'Connor, an 18-year-old student in Presentation College Warrenmount, in Dublin's south inner city, glances at her tutor and mentor Catherine Murphy. "When you come here you can see your tutors are ordinary people too," she says. "It's not Albert Einstein sitting beside you."
They are sitting in a lecture room in DIT Kevin Street on a dark November evening after one hour of biology tutorial work. Murphy is just 19, a second-year student of applied chemistry in Kevin Street and one of a number of DIT students who have opted to act as mentors for second-level pupils from local schools. She is also herself a former pupil of Warrenmount - a clear case of an older student acting as a potential role model for younger people from the same school.
For one hour each week, the young mentors assist the younger students with a particular area of study, as well as offering more general advice on the Leaving Certificate, going to college and college life itself.
"It's better than dealing with a teacher," O'Connor says. "A teacher has a whole class. Here, they're more your own age and you can ask them questions without feeling stupid."
The mentor programme is one of a number of initiatives introduced by the DIT in an effort to create links with local second-level schools and encourage more of their pupils to consider moving on to third level. The areas of Dublin involved, particularly in the vicinity of the Kevin Street complex, have been grossly neglected for many years. One local school has recorded only three pupils in 20 years who have gone on to do a third-level course.
There are any number of reasons behind such statistics - lack of parental expectations, lack of peers going on to college who could provide an example, financial considerations. To their credit, third-level colleges are now playing a larger role in reversing these trends - generally unassisted by direct Government spending - but such intervention is long overdue and is far too late for some.
"There is no history of education in these families, not even to finishing second level, going back generations," says Dr Tommy Cooke, coordinator of the LINKS programme in DIT. "That, combined with unemployment, leads to a whole culture of not going to third level."
There are 55 fifth and sixth-year pupils from Warrenmount involved in the mentor programme, which has been running since October 1996. Lily Rutledge, vice-principal of Warrenmount, says the CAO applications from the school are likely to rise this year as a direct result of the programme.
"We're going to have a definite increase this year," she says. "In the last few years, there's been a huge fall-off as service jobs become readily available. Particularly for the smarter girls, it seems a big sacrifice to go on to third level. "Mixing with the DIT students themselves is good for them - just coming into the place and walking around. It's friendly and the people are friendly. They've got the idea now that college can be fulfilling and fun."
The mentor programme allows a much-needed normality to build up around the idea of going to college. "There's a stigma attached to it," O'Connor says. Murphy agrees: "Everyone looks at you when you talk about it - it's like, `only the swots go to college'. To them it seems it's out of reach."
The mentor programme operates in a number of DIT colleges and is only one aspect of the LINKS initiative. Students and staff assist primary-school pupils with study programmes in their own schools; there are also educational-awareness programmes involving visits to DIT colleges and a summer school. The DIT has also passed on 70 computers (mainly ones with old 386 and 486 processors) to local schools and community groups as the institute upgrades its own computer system.
From next year, a new project will commence in association with the Dublin Schools Business Partnership of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce. Entitled "Pathways through Education", it aims to address the problems of lack of self-esteem, confidence and motivation which prevent many young people from less-well-off backgrounds from progressing to third level.
In many cases, despite efforts by Dublin colleges like the DIT, TCD, DCU, UCD (see below) and the National College of Industrial Relations, third-level education remains out of reach due to an almost criminally outdated and inadequate grants system. For some, the financial burden of education is already heavy at second level: Lily Rutledge estimates that, at a conservative estimate, more than 50 per cent of students in Warrenmount hold down part-time jobs.
Indeed, there is a case to be argued that some form of financial assistance at second level may be necessary to end generations of non-participation at third-level. DCU already operates a programme of this kind but it is, of necessity, limited to a small number of pupils and schools; only State funding can provide the necessary finances to reverse an ingrained trend of ending education at second level.
Last year, in an effort to remove some of the financial burden, the DIT gave 11 scholarships worth £1,500 per annum each to students from inner-city schools. "The Higher Education Grant is paltry," the DIT's Tommy Cooke says. "A grant of £600 per year for a kid from a very poor background is laughable.
"College also has a social dimension. You need a few bob in your pocket to buy books, but you also need to be able to socialise with the other students, to maybe work two nights per week instead of five. They need more money in their hands to survive, particularly in first year." Both the second-level pupils and their mentors have only praise for the DIT programme and hope it might be expanded.
"We had nobody," Catherine Murphy says. "I could have done with help. That's why I'm doing it now. I think that if someone had done it for me I'd have been delighted. It just makes it easier."
