Anne Jordan is a woman of many parts. In her time, she has taught film studies, acted as chief examiner in English for a British A level board and worked as an Open University tutor. Today, she combines her role as manager of Waterford IT's Educational Development Centre with teaching an Open University course on the Enlightenment and lecturing in philosophy at TCD.

Jordan was born in Dublin of Irish parents, but spent her much of her life in England, to which she emigrated with her family as a child. A graduate of Keele University, she returned to Ireland with her husband and young family in 1981 - glad to escape the Thatcher years there, she says. In Waterford, the Jordans both took up teaching jobs at what is now the institute of technology. They have never looked back, she says.

Initially, her area was the humanities but, later, inspired by the work of Dr Venie Martin the then head of adult education at Waterford IT, she moved into that field. "I loved it," she says. "Watching people develop solid analytical and writing skills from very shaky beginnings is wonderful."

In 1996, Jordan was appointed manager of the new Educational Development Centre, which was funded largely by EU programmes. The centre's remit is to engage in educational projects, conduct research and manage staff development at WIT.

A major focus of the centre's work has been in the area of access provision for disadvantaged adults. "We were the first college to develop a NCEA-validated access course," Jordan notes with some pride. It was as a result of co-operation with a local community action group that Jordan began to realise that simply offering courses was not enough to lure people back into education. "We set up a course for people on a nearby corporation housing estate," she recalls, "but found that it ended up attracting a mainly middle-class clientele. We learned that you can set up all the courses you like, it will make very little difference unless people have access to educational guidance."

As a result, the Educational Development Centre set up the South Eastern Regional Guidance Service for disadvantaged adults. The initiative serves people who are socially excluded or are at risk of being socially excluded in Waterford city and county and in counties Wexford and Tipperary.

The service has recently been adopted by the Department of Education and Science and the National Centre for Guidance in Education as one of the eight pilot guidance services for adults, which have been established as a result of recommendations in the Green Paper on Adult Education. Jordan's only regret is that the service is currently restricted to people from disadvantaged backgrounds and early school-leavers. "My feeling is that adults who are unable to access educational guidance are just as disadvantaged."

The Educational Development Centre's current project is the establishment of a local drop-in centre to enable individuals and groups to access learning packages via computer. The target for the programme is disadvantaged groups. "We're particularly interested in older unemployed men over 35. They are the most at-risk group. A number of studies have shown that people of that age in long term unemployment are early school-leavers and have poor literacy skills."

Jordan fervently believes that as a nation we are not doing enough to provide educational opportunities for early school-leavers who are over 30 years of age. "Using the Clancy figures for 1992, I estimate that there are only about 150 adults over the age of 30 studying full-time in higher education in Ireland," Jordan says. The figure is minuscule, yet Jordan believes that there is a huge uncatered-for demand for higher education among the over-30s. "Almost two-thirds of the Open University's students are over the age of 35," she points out. "In the Republic, we need more flexible provision and more targeting of older adults.

"Our population is now an ageing one and this will become more apparent in the years to come. As it stands, older people are selecting themselves out of education. We need a decent grant system, more flexible timetables which allow people to combine work and study, and adequate supports for students - creches, counselling and extra tuition. There's still an assumption on the part of administrators that education is only for the young. This must change."

Like most people working in the adult-education sector, Jordan agrees that there is a very real sense in which education is wasted on the young. Why not take a more flexible approach to college entry? Youngsters, if they so wished, could leave school after Leaving Cert, take up jobs, travel or whatever, and then gain access to higher education at a later stage, she says. "It's a tremendous advantage to have older people in the group. They are far more motivated and focused than younger students."

While many of the over 30s will want to return to education for professional reasons - to up-skill or retrain for new careers - there will always be a significant number who want to attend third level simply because they missed out first time around. "Lots of people wish they had had the opportunity to go to third level after school," she says. "As a matter of social justice, we need to provide opportunities for this group."

Although much of the work of The Educational Development Centre has been involved with access and guidance, another important aspect of its work is in the area of staff development in the IT sector. The centre's recently published booklet, Training Opportunities for Staff in Waterford Institute of Technology, highlights the wide range of staff training programmes coming up in the college over the next year.

A major problem for all third-level institutions has been the fact that, traditionally, lecturers have been appointed on the basis of their disciplines, rather than their teaching abilities or qualifications. With relatively little third-level teacher training available, "by and large, teachers teach as they have been taught."

"Teachers need to be aware that the profile of students has changed," Jordan argues.

"There are generations coming up whose experience of reading is minimal - even highpoints students will admit to having never read a single book. And it's important to remember that students are coming from a school system which is still highly prescriptive - they're not used to doing things off their own bat. We have to think more clearly about the teaching methods we use."