SCHOOLCHILDREN from deprived areas are being encouraged to stay on at school and aim higher.

The Government scheme, called Aim Higher, has been running in schools in the area for a year and hopes to encourage youngsters to go to college and university.

And last week nine people, working in schools to enthuse students who might otherwise never think of staying on after GCSEs, let alone reading for a degree, received certificates at a lunch at Missenden Abbey.

Among the guests were two students, Louise Hulston and Alex Peek from Bucks Chilterns University College (BCUC), who are Student Ambassadors.

They welcome schoolchildren on visits to the university and join them in residential schools.

School students Daniela Dilibero, 17, from St Bernard's Catholic School, Daws Hill Lane, High Wycombe, Tauseef Mohammed, 16, and Fred Boyles, 17, both from Cressex Community School, Holmers Lane, are all now thinking about higher education thanks to their learning mentors, Jane Emerson at St Bernard's and Jane Matthews at Cressex.

The three have all just come back from a business studies Easter school run by BCUC for Aim Higher after being encouraged to go by their mentors. Though Fred missed his mum's home cooking, the course, with its mix of study and social life, went down a treat.

The three approved of the informality of the mentoring system and more practically, the fact that their mentors had provided laptops for them to use at home.

The Aim Higher scheme lasts for three years, but it may be extended. It is a partnership between schools, colleges, BCUC, Oxford Brookes and Bucks County Council.

Jim O'Shea, the Aim Higher Wycombe Coordinator, said: "Mentors provide help and encouragement to young people who are bright, but whose families might never have had anything to do with further education or sixth forms and certainly would not think automatically about university for their children.

"This is about keeping the children in education. Teachers are there to teach the curriculum. The learning mentor is a different role, but the jobs complement one another."

Danny Wright, liaison officer from BCUC, said: "We are not selling BCUC. We are selling the idea of going to university."

Tracey Walter, the learning mentor at Sir William Ramsay School, Rose Avenue, Hazlemere, said the job involved one-to-one talking, small groups, or even work in the classroom.

She believed that in exams 90 per cent of the children had achieved their targets or done better than expected, than they might have done if left on their own.

Bob Bird, chairman of governors at Holmer Green Senior School, said learning mentors helped to raise the expectations of the children.

"Often their parents don't have any sort of academic expectation themselves, or for their children," said Mr Bird.