It all begins at home...
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A recent European study has shown that high quality pre-school can help to change the effects of social disadvantage. The Effective Provision Of Pre-school Primary & Secondary Education study showed that early educational intervention can break the cycle of economic disadvantage, but that it needs to be accompanied with a good home-learning environment.
This includes things like parents helping children with their homework, reading to them and re-enforcing the value of education to them.
College access programmes aim to work with students as early as possible.
"At the moment, we start working with students from 19 primary schools at around the age of 10," says Cliona Hannon of the Trinity Access Programme. "We want to keep them in school and interested in learning and also help them aim for something higher for when they finish school. Ideally, there would be a continuum of projects with the same schools right from a child's first school day, but a higher education institution can't fix all the problems that exist in somebody's educational chances. For the moment, we are working with students as early as possible."
- Lisa Jewell
