Dubliner Brian Gunnery could not wait to get to get out of school and left at age 15, after “barely” passing his Junior Certificate. “I didn’t really like education whatsoever.”
Primary school had been good, “but when I went to secondary school, I just felt I wasn’t capable of keeping up with the content and homework. I really, really struggled”.
Growing up with three siblings, and more step-siblings, there were issues at their home in Blanchardstown, Co Dublin. He remembers a neighbourhood environment of crime and substance abuse, with plenty of his peers affected by those societal problems. “We confided in each other because we were collectively experiencing that type of stuff. When you went to school, the last thing on your mind was actually learning,” Gunnery says.
The only subject he remembers enjoying was home economics, “just because the teacher was really nice”.
RM Block
The other teachers tended to be hard on him and fellow classmates who were not keeping up. “I think they believed us to be bold. So it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. They said we were bold; we acted bold,” says Gunnery, now aged 38, a father of three, and a facilitator on the Stem Passport for Inclusion programme based in Maynooth University (MU), Co Kildare. The programme is a collaboration between academia, industry and the Department of Education aimed at opening pathways into science, technology, engineering and maths for disadvantaged communities.
Within Gunnery’s own family and childhood social circles, finishing school was not important. “I did not know anybody who had gone on to college and barely knew anybody who had a Leaving Cert,” he says.
He recalls his mother telling him, “If you’re not interested in school, you’d better bring money home.” This he did initially by going to Youthreach, an education programme for early school leavers, “where we were paid, basically, to attend education”. He took a “pre-apprenticeship” carpentry course at a centre in Manor Street.
“It was really enjoyable,” he recalls of learning in a completely different, holistic environment, in smaller classes. “The teachers met you where you were at. If you couldn’t understand the content, they could pivot.”
But he could never have imagined that one day he would be on the other side of the table in Youthreach centres, with students regarding him as “just another teacher who thinks he’s going to change the world” – until he opened his mouth.
I hated education. Just because I couldn’t keep up with everybody else, I had told myself that I’m no good at it. When I started in college, when I was doing my degree, I was really good at it. It was a feeling that I’d never had before
“I’d tell my story and they would perk up like meerkats. They’d be like, ‘What?’ To be honest, a lot of them reminded me so much of myself that I would almost be embarrassed, because I was a little s**t and they would have the same behavioural traits.”
He knew if they could relate, he would be able to show them how there is opportunity in education.
Gunnery’s attempt to complete an apprenticeship was thwarted by the downturn in construction after the financial crash of 2008. He took a retail job, then started to work in a betting shop at age 21 before moving into the fitness industry. As a teenager he had discovered a passion for exercise at his local leisure centre in Coolmine.
“I’ve been disciplined. I would work out five days a week since I’m 15.” It was a coping tool, “what I always went back to when things got a bit tough”.
He worked in a couple of gyms before opening his own 13 years ago. Having saved hard, he also sold his car and took out a loan to set up a small group personal training gym in Rosemount Business Park. He travelled to China to buy equipment. “How I grew up, you’re savvy, you learn, you’re brazen and you take chances,” he says.
His gym clients just happened to include the inspirational Katriona O’Sullivan, MU professor, author of the bestselling, Poor and newly published Hungry: A Biography of My Body, and director of the National Centre for Inclusive Higher Education. At the time, Gunnery had started listening to a psychology-based podcast that had been recommended to him.
School was just a really bad environment for me. I’m autistic. Loads of people in a packed room and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. There was so much dread about being stuck there
— Maebh Jordan (18)
“I didn’t know what psychology was, but a lot of the psychology concepts that were in the podcast aligned with my lived experience. So I was very curious. I was asking questions and looking at different kinds of papers. To be honest, I’d never studied a day in my life while I was in school. I never did homework. So this was all new to me, but it was exciting.”
Knowing O’Sullivan’s psychology background, he would discuss some of his findings with her when she was at the gym. “We’d be debating psychology and I’d be challenging her.” When he told her how much he enjoyed the topics, she suggested he consider doing a course.
He was reluctant because, in his own mind, he was a “failure” because he had not completed secondary school. However, he eventually enrolled in a part-time psychology BA honours degree course at the Dublin Business School, which he has just completed.
Before that, “I would go as far as to say I hated education. Just because I couldn’t keep up with everybody else, I had told myself that I’m no good at it. When I started in college, when I was doing my degree, I was really good at it. It was a feeling that I’d never had before.”
During that time, O’Sullivan asked him to do some work with Youthreach as a role model for the benefits of education. He learned about coding, data science and analysis so he could facilitate the Stem passport scheme one or two days a week, alongside running his gym.
In a Youthreach classroom, he knew how the students were feeling after struggling in mainstream school. He felt empowered by being able to share the buzz he was getting from third-level education.
“It was going full circle to say, ‘Listen, although you might feel that you’re not capable of doing it now, this is potentially what could be down the road in 20 years.’”
When he was offered a full-time job two years ago as facilitator of the expanding Stem passport scheme, “that was a deciding moment. I ended up closing the gym”.
Since its pilot in 2021, the programme has grown from a small, targeted intervention for disadvantaged girls into a national scheme for equity in Stem. The qualification awards up to 60 Leaving Certificate bonus points toward higher education entry and is offered to all transition-year students in Deis schools, Youthreach learners and women returning to education.
The students Gunnery works with at Youthreach are highly intelligent, he says, but they have not been able to perform within mainstream education. As a result, they tend to suffer with low self-esteem. “To be safe, they just don’t engage. When you give them an opportunity to express themselves and to try out different things within Stem education and they realise, ‘I’m actually really, really good at this,’ it’s a light bulb moment. It’s like, ‘What else am I good at?’”
Maebh Jordan (18), who completed the Stem passport scheme through Youthreach in Crumlin, Dublin, left mainstream school after second year. She had been in first year when the Covid-19 shutdown hit in March 2020 and her attendance was sporadic after in-classroom teaching resumed that September.
“It was just a really bad environment for me. I’m autistic. Loads of people in a packed room and I couldn’t concentrate on anything. There was so much dread about being stuck there,” Jordan says.
Her parents could see she was struggling and tried, through meetings with the school, to figure out something that might work for her.
“It was just such a huge thing leaving school. It took me a while to acknowledge that it was actually the best thing for me because I kept trying to go back in, but not being able to,” says Jordan, the middle child of three in her family.
In September 2021, she started two years of iScoil, an online learning service that offers personalised programmes with QQI accreditation to early school leavers aged 13-16. After that she wanted to get back into school, because she knew she wanted to go to college.
Youthreach, with its smaller classes, seemed the best option. However, two months into her first year it proved too much. “I got really burnt out after two years of not doing any in-person [learning].” But she was able to return in September 2024 and felt a big difference at Youthreach, compared to school, was that teachers listened more.
“I found that the students get to have opinions, basically,” she says in a video call alongside IT skills teacher Jamie McCarthy. He invites students he thinks are suitable to participate in the Stem passport scheme, which involves modules spread over five days. For the Crumlin cohort, the course has been split between in-centre learning and off-site sessions at Microsoft’s Dream Space education facility in Leopardstown and the National Centre for Inclusive Higher Education in MU.
“Unfortunately, the numbers I can bring to it are limited because we have an old minibus that we’re borrowing,” he explains. “I can only ever sign seven students up for something at a time because that’s how many I can bring out of the centre at once.”
[ Rethink needed on meeting the demand for Stem graduatesOpens in new window ]
Jordan, who is now a Dream Space ambassador, says she particularly enjoyed learning coding. For the final “design thinking” project, taking one of the UN’s sustainable development goals, life below water, the group came up with an app for co-ordinating volunteers to clean up rivers and beaches.
Working and learning in different ways definitely helps you, adds Jordan, who will move on to do a tertiary degree in politics, society and media, with two years at Rathmines College and then two more at Technological University Dublin. Her plan is then to do a post-graduate qualification to become a librarian. Tertiary degrees were introduced in 2023 to enable students, such as those in Youthreach, as a way to progress outside the CAO system.
Work at the national inclusion centre and initiatives such as the Stem passport have helped change the perception of Youthreach students, says McCarthy. Prejudice towards them has been “heartbreaking, to say the least, because the learners we have are amazing. They’ve just been let down by a system that’s too rigid”.
It has been an amazing chance, he says, to show “our learners are as smart as people in mainstream education; they just needed the chance, the understanding and the support to get there.”
O’Sullivan, in a written comment to The Irish Times, says the passport programme is “proud to work with Youthreach” to ensure everyone can see a place for themselves in Stem. Having Gunnery deliver it “has added another layer to this programme. As a young person who attended Youthreach he is an example to the young people that anything is possible.”
Gunnery, who will do a Masters next, admits he finds the importance of studying for the Leaving a “hard sell” right now to his 18-year-old son. He empathises.
“Twenty years ago, if you told me that I would love education and thrive in it, I would have laughed,” he says. “I never, in a million years, considered that I would be a university graduate and an educator.”
