Trinity College Dublin

A Brief History of the Voluntary Tuition Programme, 1986-2010

In 2007, the Voluntary Tuition Programme consisted of a committee of parents and community members and Trinity Students, approximately four hundred student volunteers from Trinity College, and three hundred and fifty pupils who receive an hour's tuition every week. The Programme is run as a student-community initiative, in a partnership which has developed over twenty years, and which has created over four thousand pairs of pupil and student for one-to-one tuition.

Background: the Pearse Street Area in the 1970s

The traditional source of income for the Pearse Street area came from manual employment on the docks or in large factories: Ports and Docks, Gas Works, Bottle Glass Co., Banana Stores. Many local people left school early to secure manual work, and never obtained educational qualifications. With the economic change of the 1970s and 1980s, local factories moved to the suburbs and manual employment in the area collapsed. This led to massive unemployment for local people in the area around Trinity College. Educational qualifications and skills became paramount to secure employment in the Irish economy.

During the 1970s, students from Trinity College provided extra tuition for the children attending local schools, but this was on a small scale and an informal basis, and wound down towards the late 1970s. It was not appreciated in the local area at this time that education was becoming vital to securing employment. A change in emphasis in the community began with the coming together of three local women (all parents): Betty Watson, Ann Murray, and Dolores Samson. These women would be founder members of the Tuition Programme and of the Adult Education Department in St. Andrew's Resource Centre.

Origins of the Voluntary Tuition Programme

By this mid-1980s, some local community members began to recognize the value of education in seeking employment. This presented a huge challenge. The first step was to find a means of providing extra tuition to keep children in education and to help them achieve their educational goals. The idea took shape when a local woman approached the Social Service Centre in 20 Westland Row to ask for help for her son in Maths. The result of this request was the founding meeting of the Tuition Programme, where it was decided that Trinity College would be approached and asked to enrol college students as voluntary tutors. The meeting also discussed the education of parents. It was considered that Second Chance Education should go hand in hand with tuition for children. The VEC was approached to provide a tutor for parents, while negotiations began with Susan Parks of Trinity College Education Department. The first year of the Voluntary Tuition Programme opened with one second level pupil and one Trinity student, Eddie Manning. By the end of the year, there were seven children on the programme, and Eddie was still the sole tutor.

A New Era: St Andrew's Resource Centre

St Andrew's Primary School in Pearse Street had ceased to be a National School in 1976. In 1986, the Social Services Centre moved to the old school building, now St Andrew's Resource Centre, Pearse Street. The tuition programme moved with the centre. This was the beginning of a new era for the provision for Adult education and the tuition programme. St Andrew's Board of Management agreed to provide the centre's facilities free of charge for both new projects. The board pledged to support the founders in developing and supporting the programmes. At this stage, the need for a committee became apparent. The founder members approached some community activists, but because of the need to communicate the importance of education to other parents in the area, the founders were encouraged to remain active as committee members.

At this stage, all children from the Parishes of Westland Row and City Quay could attend the tuition programme. In the beginning, this tuition was provided for second-level students only. Soon, there was a demand from parents for primary tuition, and the numbers of children seeking tuition began to increase. Another meeting with Susan Parks of Trinity College took place, and the three founders were invited for the first time to make an appeal for tutors at the opening lectures of the new academic year.

Discoveries

Continuous evaluation of the programme produced information about the difficulties affecting young people in school completion, educational qualifications, and employment opportunities. The evaluation used feedback from children, parents, tutors and the wider community. Many social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors hindered educational achievement. Parents did not necessarily consider education important and children were not always encouraged to continue at school. There was no tradition of achieving educational qualifications, and third-level education was seen as an achievement for those who were better off. The Voluntary Tuition Programme gave local children and parents a chance to meet and interact with with young people who valued education and had continued to third level.

The Programme was important because many parents found themselves unable to help their children with their schoolwork, as they did not have formal education themselves. They were not necessarily in a position to support their children in continuing education. In some cases, this meant that a child left school early to bring in extra income; in others, it was a matter of being unable to pay for books, school or college fees, uniforms, travel etc. In large families, there was often overcrowding, and little space or peace for children to study.

It was clear that the delivery of the tuition must meet the need of the community. Efforts were made to listen and to respond with a service that came from the community and was delivered by the community. This involved the founder members, parents, local schools, students and professionals from the local college. This co-operation propelled the delivery of extra tuition and was the foundation for the Voluntary Tuition Programme.

Due to the large number of children seeking tuition, the founder members saw the need to formalize the programme. At the beginning of the school year, they went into classrooms, talked about the programme, and gave out application forms. Once children enrolled with the programme, they were matched up with Trinity Students. In the early years of the programme, resources for this stage of the process (photocopying facilities and stationery) were provided by the TCD Student's Union. Once each pupil had been allocated a suitable student, the pair would meet for an hour a week in St Andrew's Resource Centre. This continued for several years as numbers attending continued to grow.

A new structure

In 1993, Professor P.J. Drudy of the Economics Department at Trinity College was invited to a committee meeting with a view to consolidating the programme, which now had two hundred children attending. He introduced the parents who co-ordinated the programme to the President of the Students’ Union and the President of the Vincent de Paul Society at TCD. Both groups played a major role in developing the next phase of the programme. A committee of fifteen volunteers was formed, consisting of local parents and Trinity students. The committee held monthly meetings throughout the school year in St Andrew’s Resource Centre, and an Annual General Meeting was held yearly. This is the structure that has remained to this day.

More changes came about as the college invited the programme to recruit student tutors during Freshers' Week, an important concession, as the programme could not be considered a college society as it had full members who were not on the college books. The committee decided to elect a Trinity student who was involved with the programme to chair the committee, which had a succession of chairpersons over the years. The 1995 chairperson (Liam O'Sullivan) co-ordinated the programme's child protection guidelines, updated and distributed yearly, since his election. In early 2009, Liam got together with Thomas Holt (2009/2010 Chairperson) and began updating the guidelines for the following academic year.

Into the College

By the mid-1990s, St Andrew's was struggling to allocate space to over 200 pupils and 200 students attending weekly. It was clear that the programme needed more space, and that the primary level students should be separated from the secondary tuition. As the new development at Trinity College, Goldsmith Hall, neared completion, the committee of 1995/6 wrote to Provost Tom Mitchell with information and an invitation to visit the programme. Provost Mitchell was supportive of the programme and agreed to extend college support for the project. He granted the project space in Goldsmith Hall, which is ideally situated at the corner of Westland Row and Pearse Street. This space, which accommodates over one hundred people, was vital to the programme's expansion, and is still used for all secondary-level tuition. The new space eventually made it possible to provide tuiton to young people not only in the immediate area surrounding Trinity College, but also in schools associated with the Trinity Access Programme (TAP, founded 1994). Goldsmith Hall has given the programme the opportunity to develop a working relationship with the Trinity Access Programme. Some young adults participating in the Voluntary Tuition Programme have gone on the Access course at TAP, which prepares students for third-level education. The Voluntary Tuition Programme's PARALLEL programme (established in 2003), is the result of collaboration with, and is funded by TAP: it is an extended version of the programme offering group activities as well one-to-one tuition to pupils at Junior Cert level, who are encouraged through the PARALLEL programme to remain in Third Level education.

By 2003, the administrative burden of the programme was huge: a problem exacerbated by the fact that the programme had never had an office. Negotiations with Trinity College culminated in an agreement that the college would grant office space in Goldsmith Hall in return for refurbishment payments amounting to 5,000 euro. Dublin City Council and the Dublin Docklands Development Authority funded this work, and thanks to the college and to these bodies, the programme has benefitted enormously from the use of an office since 2004. The programme's running costs have always been kept low by exclusive reliance on volunteers, and are adequately covered by generous donations from the Trinity Foundation and Trust, and contributions from the TCD Students Union, St Andrew's Resource Centre, and a number of the feeder schools. Donations of equipment and textbooks from TCD staff and students and community members also reduce expenditure. The Programme's early links with the Students' Union and the St Vincent de Paul Society do not survive in any formal sense, but the programme has always been able to turn to the Students Union for support in college matters, and receives a yearly donation of several hundred euros from the Union in lieu of administrative support. The unique structure of the programme, which operates as a partnership between community members and students, means that it cannot function as a college society under the Central Societies Committee. This disadvantage has been alleviated over the years by the support of various staff members in the college. The creation of a Community Liaison Officer in 2002 has been especially welcome, and has provided the programme with a much-needed designated point of contact in the college.

New Branches, New Activities

As the benefits of the programme became clear, parents from the Ringsend area requested permission for their children to participate in the programme in 1997. The committee established the principle that, if a significant number of pupils from any school or locality participated in the programme, parents would be asked to supply a number of volunteers, who would join the committee and help to run the programme. Working on this model, and with the co-operation of Ringsend Technical Institute, which provided free space for up to sixty pupils one evening a week, the Voluntary Tuition Programme established a centre for older primary pupils in Ringsend. Younger primary pupils from Ringsend were accommodated at St Andrew's and secondary pupils from this area worked at Goldsmith Hall

By the late 1990s, insurance requirements at St Andrew's made it impossible for the centre to accommodate children younger than seven years old. As parents had seen the benefits of the programme to their older childern, a request was submitted for the tuition in a centre suitable for the youngest primary school children. This would help with early reading difficulties, and form the habit of learning. The opening of the Pearse Area Recreation Centre (2002) has made it possible to have afternoon tuition for children in this age group since that date.

Establishment of the programme at a number of centres has given the programme a core group of long-term members consisting of parents and community volunteers. At the same time, the committee welcomes an influx of new student members yearly. This means that the programme maintains important connections with management of centres, and with feeder schools, where a number of staff members dedicate much time and energy to encouraging pupils to apply to the programme. At the same time, the programme is open to new ideas, and has developed since 2001 a number of educational clubs (Drama, Art and crafts, French and Irish), a school VISIT programme which teaches French and Science at primary level, the PARALLEL (extended secondary) programme, and oral language workshops for Leaving Certificate students.

Delivery of the Programme

Tuition now takes place in four locations:

St Andrew’s Resource Centre, Pearse Street (Monday to Thursday)
Goldsmith Hall, Pearse Street (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday)
Ringsend Technical Institute (Tuesday evenings)
Pearse Area Recreation Centre, Pearse House (Thursday afternoons)

The programme runs during the college year, and requires about two dozen supervisors, parents and Trinity students, from the committee to operate effectively. They oversee the work of more than three hundred volunteers from the student body, each of whom is allocated a pupil for the year. 350 pupils had enrolled in the programme for 2005-6 up to the end of January, and late applications continue to arrive. Over four hundred students and a small number of staff members from Trinity College had volunteered to commit themselves to an hour’s work per week at a fixed time with a specific pupil, or to participate in the PARALLEL programme, the educational clubs, the VISIT programme, and the oral language workshops. Arranging pairs, monitoring attendance, and replacing tutors where necessary is a huge administrative task: in the 1990s, this was managed with index cards, posted messages and message boards; now, communication and organization relies on e-mail, text messaging and a web-enabled database which permits tutors to select pupils.

In many cases, pupils stay with the programme from primary school to Leaving Cert level, and have the same tutor for several years. For the primary level, particular emphasis is placed on  developing numerical and literary skills in an unthreatening and enjoyable way. At secondary level, students request specialist tuition in particular subjects. The aim of the programme is not only to improve academic performance, but also to stimulate interest in learning, and encourage the children to continue in the education system. The success of the program is the commitment of all those who volunteered and contributed to it over the last twenty years. The partnership of community members with Trinity students has helped local children to avail of educational opportunities and qualifications and skills which will help them compete on an equal footing to secure employment in the Irish economy.