Larkin Community College is a new school in Dublin's north-east inner city - an area where few students go on to college.
The 300-pupil co-educational school is in Cathal Brugha Street, in an area that was devastated by drugs in the 1980s. The boundaries of its catchment area include O'Connell Street, the East Wall and the North Strand. It is an amalgamation of two VEC schools - Parnell Vocational School and North Strand School - and opened last March.
According to the school's principal, Mr Noel O'Brien, neither of these schools had any tradition of sending pupils to third level.
"I don't think anyone from there went to university for years," he says. This, he claims, has nothing to do with a lack of ability on the part of students but everything to do with underachievement.
The reasons for this underachievement are complex. Mr O'Brien points to the lack of a third-level tradition in the community. If no one in your family or neighbourhood has ever been to university, you're hardly likely to want to go there yourself.
It's only when your parents are encouraging you and your peer group is queueing up to go that you will want to join the crowd, he says. "Economic factors have also played a very important role. In the past, young people tended to leave school to access jobs for economic reasons."
According to Larkin's principal, a school's expectations of its students is also a major determinant of student success.
"If you have the expectation that students can achieve and can behave well and that by doing well they can access college places, then you can bring that into being, [but] you can't do that in isolation. School has got to connect with the local community."
Mr O'Brien notes a sea-change in local attitudes in recent times. People, he says, are becoming aware of the opportunities that are available as a result of education. He is confident students currently at the school will make it to third level.
The school's most recent crop of Leaving Cert students has taken up jobs in local businesses and Dublin Corporation, while a number of students have remained on in the school to pursue a Post Leaving Cert (PLC) course in information technology.
Mr O'Brien believes that these students will act as a catalyst for other students. "It will be easier for the next group to remain on," he says.
The local community is tight-knit and most students enjoy relatively stable extended-family backgrounds.
On the issue of the social backgrounds of his pupils, the principal refuses to be drawn. "I don't see them as being any different to students living in Blackrock of Kerry. They're in the same system, sitting the same exams and will be judged on the same criteria."
The school benefits from a number of third-level access programmes run by TCD and the DIT and places an emphasis on sport, music and drama. A pilot programme to improve school attendance among a group regarded as at risk of dropping out has forced the school to re-examine the factors that would make school more meaningful for this group.
Working in such a school is like digging for gold, according to Mr O'Brien. The talent is there - the issue is how to extract it.