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

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
schools are roughly comparable to one another. In Irish, Dawes Point has
the lowest scores, most likely because no students were taking higher
level Irish (see Chapter Two), while Lang Street has much higher Irish
grades than other working-class schools. The pattern for Maths is somewhat
similar, with the highest grades found in Harris Street, Belmore
Street and Fig Lane and the lowest grades found in Hay Street and Dixon
Street, both working-class schools (Figure 4.6). Overall, it is evident that
working-class schools tend to have lower average grades than mixed or
middle-class schools across English, Irish and Maths. However, some
variation in the relative ‘ranking’ of schools across subjects indicates the
potential role of school policy regarding access to higher level as well as
quality of teaching of a particular subject.
The analyses so far have focused on young people who took the
Leaving Certificate Established or Leaving Certificate Vocational programmes.
However, a small number of young people in the study cohort
took the Leaving Certificate Applied programme. Figure 4.7 shows the
proportion of the exam cohort who took LCA in the six case-study
schools which provided the programme. LCA students make up 10-15
per cent of the cohort in four of the schools while they form only a very
small minority (3 per cent) of students in Belmore Street, a mixed intake
girls’ school. There is a dramatic contrast with Dixon Street, a workingclass
coed school, where LCA students make up 43 per cent of the cohort.
These patterns should be borne in mind in interpreting betweenschool
differences in LCE/LCVP exam performance since in schools
with higher proportions taking LCA, a smaller, and perhaps more selective,
group of students is taking the LCE/LCVP exam.