Getting with the programme - it's time to end the class divide

EQUALITY IN EDUCATION: A level playing field? Anne Byrne reports on our shameful record of providing access to third-level education for all.

'The only difference is that some women in the class would express themselves very well using all of these words. When I started, I thought 'Oh my God, I wish I could talk like that'.

"At the end of the day, our results in the exams were the same. A lot of what they were saying was bullshit. They just had the words and knew how to use them. A sentence with simple words often makes much more sense."

This mature student, who left school with a Group Certificate, has taken the plunge into part-time third-level education. She now has the confidence to overcome her spelling and grammar difficulties, with the help of the spell-checker and a word-processing package, though she had not used computers before enrolling on this course.

The college's mentoring system has been a major source of support. There are still difficulties: most of all, finance is a problem. Part-time education comes complete with fees. And then there's the children and the juggling act between family life and college. But, she's loving it and says her choice acts as an encouragement to the teenagers she works with.

We are talking in the four-room prefab in the car park behind Waterford Institute of Technology, in the Centre for Helping, Access, Retention and Teaching (CHART). The centre's literature is impressive, complete with a quotation from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." The building is less than impressive, but the work that goes on here is more than worthwhile, though it can only address the needs of a small number of students.

The latest in the series of Clancy reports, a Fourth National Survey of Access to Higher Education (March 2002), shows that socio-economic disadvantage is still an excellent predictor of lack of progress to third-level. There has been progress, but it is miniscule. For instance, the children of fathers classified as unskilled manual workers accounted for an estimated 0.21 per cent of those entering college full-time in 1998, compared to 0.03 per cent in 1980. Children of the "higher professions" have the highest participation rate, at 97 per cent.

There has been a proliferation of access programmes and initiatives (the cynical might say the declining population of school-leavers makes these a more attractive option to colleges now) but the reality is that these are insufficient to make a real difference in term of numbers. Of course, for the individual student, they can mean the difference between attending college or not.

One university academic has said privately that access programmes are aimed at the "brightest of the poor": they don't want to encourage students into college if they don't have a chance of completing the programme. Or maybe they simply want to cream off the most able to spice up the often-mediocre middle-class student staple?

The lack of access to higher education for those who are socio-economically disadvantaged is not just a shameful indictment of the higher-education system but an indictment of Government policy from pre-school through primary and second level.

If these children benefited from adequately integrated early interventions in primary or second-level, or at community or home level, then they could compete on a level playing field and there would be no need for centres such as CHART.

WIT access officer Nuala Lennon outlines a range of initiatives that span primary, second level and third level. The college has been active in addressing access issues since the mid-1990s and the centre was established in 2000.

One of the key ways of making a programme stick is to integrate it into the college's mainstream activities, says Lennon. For instance, Soccer for Success (an initiative linking soccer and study, started by UL, and since been taken up by other colleges) in WIT is rooted in the recreational management programme. It is offered, and accredited, as one of the fourth-year electives, therapeutic management.

Under REACH - an access and support programme aimed at fifth- and sixth-years - 47 students have enrolled in the college. Supports include induction programmes, financial assistance, personal mentors, a book loan scheme, guidance and additional computer access.

For adults, WIT also offers a foundation programme and a community education programme. A millennium project targets second years in second level who are academically able but in danger of dropping out of school. Like many other access initiatives, it is a pilot project with uncertain future funding and difficulties regarding commitment to participants, staff and future planning.

LENNON says: "As well as the problematic nature of short-term, non-mainstream programmes and inadequate funding, I would also like to stress the dangers of throwing money at the 'disadvantage problem' without considering what would be most effective utilisation of that money. No amount of money will be effective if policy makers and decision makers at all levels are not willing to resource, and more importantly, adapt mainstream programmes to embrace non-traditional methodologies.

"It is not sufficient that non-traditional methodologies remain exclusive to learning programmes and courses that often tend to have lower levels of certification or indeed certification that holds little currency (such as foundation programmes with no automatic access to third-level for successful students)."

She is anxious to give credit where it's due and says while CHART may be physically located in the "suburbs" of the institute, the initiative to establish the unit and locate it within the registrar's office (at least metaphysically) shows the college is committed to some level of mainstreaming.

Surely, it's time for the Department of Education to stop wringing its hands and cataloguing the problems of access and, instead, concentrate on remedying them.