From Leaving CertiFiCate to Leaving SChooL a Longitudinal Study ...

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
average, in the working-class schools, with particularly low scores in
Hay Street, most likely reflecting the low take-up of higher level subjects
indicated above. Scores are highest in the two middle-class schools, Fig
Lane and Harris Street, but also in Belmore Street, a mixed intake
school. Within coeducational schools, female students tend to achieve
higher grade point averages than males (except in Dixon Street), but
these differences are not statistically significant.
Figure 4.3 shows the patterns for Junior Certificate grade point average
in the same case-study schools. The relative ‘ranking’ of the schools
is similar for Junior and Leaving Certificate performance, that is, schools
with high grades at junior cycle tend to have high grades at senior cycle.
For both sets of exams, students attending working-class schools tend to
achieve lower average grades than those in mixed or middle-class
schools. The relationship between Junior and Leaving Certificate grades
for individual students will be explored below.
Figure 4.2 indicated the pattern of performance across all Leaving
Certificate exam subjects taken. It is worth exploring whether there is
any variation in achievement in individual subjects. Because many Leaving
Certificate subjects vary in the profile of students taking them, the
analysis here focuses on average grades achieved in English, Irish and
Maths, taken by (almost) all students. At the individual level, students
who achieve higher grades in one subject tend to achieve higher grades
in another. There is a correlation of 0.7 (of a maximum of 1) between
English and Irish grade scores, and 0.68 between English and Maths
scores. The between-school variation is broadly similar to that shown for
all exam subjects but some distinctive features are worth pointing out.
Levels of achievement are generally higher in English than in Irish or
Maths; this is, at least partly, related to the larger proportion of students
who take higher level English (see Chapter Two). In English and Irish,
the highest achievement levels are found in the two middle-class schools,
Harris Street and Fig Lane, and two of the mixed schools, Belmore
Street and Argyle Street (Figures 4.4 and 4.5). However, the lowestscoring
schools differ for English and Irish. Hay Street has the lowest
overall grades in English but grades among the other working-class