EVERY YEAR I see students drop out of our PLC courses and end up on the dole because they cannot afford to remain on the course without a maintenance grant," says Jerome Morrissey, principal of Ballyfermot Senior College, one of the biggest PLC colleges.

The real shame, Morrissey says, is that by dropping out and being forced on to the dole they are rendering themselves unemployable in order to get access to money but if they could afford to stay on in the college they would get qualifications which would almost certainly lead to employment."

The plight of Morrissey's students is part of a broader phenomenon, whereby students can get paid to do a whole variety of things be unemployed, take a FAS course, participate in a Youthreach programme but not to stay on in mainstream education.

"It is a problem for schools'," says Joe Rooney, general secretary of the IVEA, the representative body for VECs. "Sometimes it seems as if young people can get paid for almost anything else except to stay on in school."

"Not only does it happen at Leaving Cert level, say Tony Deffely, president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI), abut even in junior cycle you will find some pupils toying with the idea that if I drop out of school now I can get on to a Youthreach programme in six months and then I'll get paid to do my Junior Cert through Youthreach, so why should I bother staying on in school and doing it for nothing?"

Deffely is not claiming that such thinking is widespread, and it is clearly relevant only to students' from disadvantaged backgrounds but these are precisely the ones that society should be striving to maintain in the school system, he argues.

Both Rodney and Deffely point out that access to cash is an issue with young people. "They go to discos, they may smoke, they want to have the right gear money is important to them," Rooney says.

At a large school in a very disadvantaged area of Dublin, the principal says, "the kids and their parents often make huge efforts to stay on in school, but what happens is that they end up working part time. Our biggest problem here is that most of our Leaving Cert students are holding down what are effectively full time jobs, working in pubs and fast food outlets until maybe 1 or 2 a.m. and then getting up and hauling themselves, exhausted, into schools"

Against such a background, Deffely says, young people are sometimes tempted out of the education system" by the availability of either the dole, a FAS training allowance, Youthreach or other employment/training schemes.

The VECs claim angrily that the availability of training grants on FAS courses of up to £60 per week effectively puts their schools in competition with FAS. "We are simply not operating on a level playing field," Rooney says. There is a built in incentive, they say, for disadvantaged students to drop out of school after the Junior Cert and opt for a FAS course rather than stay on and do the Leaving Certificate.

A guidance counsellor in a large girls' school in a deprived area says it is quite common for a number of students to opt out before the Junior Cert, knowing that they will be taken on by. "Youthreach and get an allowance and believe me they are well versed in what they are entitled to". She emphasises that these would be less academic children who were already experiencing disillusionment with school. "And in all fairness I would have to say that they need the money. The cost of books, exams fees and all the rest can really add up in school."

Youthreach is an EU funded scheme run jointly by FAS and the VECs under which early school drop outs are guaranteed further training in Youthreach centres schools are obliged to provide lists of early leavers so that they can be followed up by Youthreach.

In itself it is a very worthy scheme indeed without it many early drop outs would be virtually unemployable. The problem is not the existence of Youthreach or the undenied excellence of many FAS courses, but the fact that marginal kids, for whom money would be a big consideration, can be paid an allowance for them but not to stay on and do the Leaving Cert.

A young person has to be 18 years old to qualify for the dole and while there is no great evidence that any sizeable numbers deliberately drop out of school at 18 to collect the dole, it is, as Jerome Morrissey observes, yet one more example of how young people can get paid to do anything but stay on at school including becoming unemployed.

Nobody in education is seriously suggesting that 18 year olds should be denied the dole though some would support the controversial proposal from the Department of Enterprise and Employment during the last Budget debate that the dole amount should be graduated for 18 and 19 year olds, so they would get less money at first and thus be encouraged to remain in education or training. (Such a system operates in Britain and Northern Ireland.) The accompanying suggestion in a confidential report prepared for the Department was that such young people should be forced to undertake training in order to qualify for the dole.

This proved an emotive issue with Proinsias de Rossa, the Minister for Social Welfare, vigorously opposing it. The end result was a compromise all unemployed 18 year olds must now register with FAS and/or local employment services after six months on the live register.

However, the VECs argue that in many cases young people are being forced on to the dole by the unavailability of grants to pursue PLC courses.

"There are 18,500 students on PLC courses," Deffely says. "That is a huge number of young people - it is as many as were in the entire higher education system in 1970. Yet, these 18,500 students have no access to maintenance grants."

A student can get a grant to go to Trinity, the DIT or the local RTC, but the grants system - inexplicably - does not extend to PLC courses. Even worse, when

PLC courses first commenced, students attending them were in receipt of an ESF training allowance, but this was subsequently dropped.

"In the White Paper, the Minister for Education outlines her aim of keeping more disadvantaged students on longer in the educational system," Deffely says. "But how can they stay on in education if there is no access to maintenance grants at all? Many of the students we are talking about are by definition disadvantaged, and for them the cost of a year or two on a PLC course without a grant is unthinkable."

He remembers vividly "the face of a former student of mine who had gone to great trouble to identify the right PLC course for herself, and I had to tell her that there were no grants available. She just walked away, because there was no way they could afford to keep her in Dublin for two years without a grant."

If she were a 550 points wiz kid she could go off to Trinity and do medicine on a grant, but not to a PLC college. "It remains the outstanding sore of Irish further education," Deffely adds.

"The lack of maintenance grants for PLC students is sheer discrimination," says Joe Rooney. It is ironic, he says, that the Department of Enterprise and Employment would talk of trying to force students off the dole and into training when the lack of grants for PLC students is, he asserts, forcing students out of training and on to the dole.

Neither the VECs nor the TUI are seeking to have teenagers debarred from the dole, or to have FAS or Youthreach training grants abolished. However, many commentators suggest that PLC students - and possibly disadvantaged students in second level schools should have access to financial support too.

The dole issue also has repercussions for middle class parents. A small number of parents have spoken to E&L over the past year of their concern at the fact that their 18 year olds were able to go on the dole against their parents' wishes; these were parents who would have been able to support their children through college.

"It is too easy for them to drop out," one said. "We were able to support him, yet he moved into a flat and qualified for the dole without any queries being made about our economic circumstances. He got a rent allowance and all the rest of it and there was nothing we could do." An 18 year old is, of course, an adult, and entitled to move out into a flat and drop out if she or he wishes.

Another parent complained that her kids who went to college were being laughed at by former classmates who had dropped out, taken a flat and gone on the dole - but still sponged off their parents. These parents would welcome a provision enforcing education or training programmes up to age 19.