John Finn is a Dubliner who left school at 14 to work on a building site. Leaving school early was the norm in his area and a paying job, no matter how dead end, was seen as preferable to staying in school. "A job was a job and a bit of money in your pocket took precedence over everything else," he says. "You didn't think about getting on, you thought about getting by. "If you had enough money to go out at the weekends and have a good time at a disco you were happy enough."
Finn spent a number of years working in the building trade before joining the Army, where he spent just over two years before buying himself out. He spent some time working in Wales before returning to Dublin during the depressed mid1980s, when he found that his lack of qualifications were a major obstacle to getting a job.
"I'd fill out the application forms, and every time it came to the part for educational standard I had nothing to fill in. I didn't have a piece of paper to say I'd passed any exam - and basically nobody wanted to know me.
"I was in the Labour Exchange one of the days and a poster caught my attention. It was directed at people who felt they had missed out on an education and wanted to do something about it. "I didn't really feel I'd missed out as such, but I had reached a point where I believed that if I didn't have a qualification of some sort and probably a Leaving Cert, I was either facing life on the labour or an endless string of menial jobs."
Finn followed up on the poster and joined a Leaving Cert class for mature students at Colaiste Ide in Finglas in February 1990. This was a pilot VTOS (Vocational Training Opportunities Scheme) programme which allows participants to retain their welfare payments while engaging in second-chance education.
"My attitude was very much that I'd give it a bash and see how I'd get on," says Finn, who is married with three young children. "To give us a taste for the Leaving Cert we sat business organisation at the end of the first year and I got an honour on an honours paper, which was very encouraging. "The following year we sat five subjects and I got all honours, including one in art. I seemed to have a flair for art and I had begun to think that I would like to teach and let things come the full circle, as it were. "So I applied for a PLC course in portfolio preparation and I was accepted on that and spent a year putting my stuff together in order to apply for a place on the degree course at the National College of Art and Design."
Finn was awarded a BA degree in art and design in 1996 and he is now teaching art part-time at the Patrician College in Finglas. "I must say the degree course was a real challenge and it took a lot of effort. I had great support from my wife throughout the time I've been studying - which started out as two years and ended up being eight - and I've just taken things one day at a time."
DESPITE coming from a family background where the value of a good education had always been emphasised, Limerick-born solicitor, John Devane, was also an early school-leaver.
A spirited child who found the formality of the education system difficult to fit into, he left school at 15 and "messed about" before joining the Army at 17 and spending three years there.
"After the Army, I had a succession of jobs - store detective, bar man and so on - and I was reaching the point where I was even finding it difficult to get poorly paid jobs. I couldn't see myself going anywhere, I was out of work for nearly a year, I had no prospects and I was at an alltime low," he says.
Deciding that picking up the threads of his education was not a bad way to go, Devane signed up with the VEC for a Leaving Cert course in 1987. He took to the course like a duck to water and flew through the exam just a year later achieving honours in all subjects. "From then on doors started opening for me," he says.
"I had always been interested in law and I used to read all sorts of material related to the subject. I decided that I would like to go on and do a law degree - which was greeted with scepticism by those who knew my track record.
"For every one person who believed in me, there were 10 who did not - and many who believed that my ambitions were running away with me." Undaunted, he applied for and secured a place to study law at UCC; he graduated with a civil law degree in 1994 - following a very difficult patch when a brain haemorrhage following a accident with his bicycle meant he lost a full year from college.
"I have to say that the support I got from people in UCC and from Professor O'Connor in particular was just fantastic," he says. "I was an average student, but I was very enthusiastic about the course and I also got involved in lobbying for grants and a better deal for mature students. "I also must pay tribute to Department of Social Welfare, whose schemes allowed me to get back into the education system as an adult student."
Devane is now working as a solicitor with Shaun Elder Solicitors in Limerick city. "I love my job and I'm working hard to get to grips with all the aspects of my profession," he says. "There was light for me at the end of the tunnel and while it's taken me a while to get here, I'm very pleased about where I've ended up. "It was a difficult enough haul. I worked part-time to support myself through college and I was lucky in being single with nobody else to support. I'm full of admiration for the mature students I've met who do all of this and have a family to look after as well.
"Having been through all of this I have to say that my mother was right: the value of a good education is enormous."
