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

Leaving Certificate Exam Performance 117
Students who are taking private tuition (‘grinds’) achieve higher
exam grades than other students (18.9 compared with 16). However, this
cannot necessarily be taken as reflecting the impact of grinds, since previous
research has indicated that those who take private tuition are
mainly those with the highest prior achievement levels and aspirations
and no net effect of grinds on Leaving Certificate performance is found
when this is taken into account (see Smyth, 2009). In keeping with previous
research (McCoy and Smyth, 2004), young people who work parttime
during junior cycle achieve lower average exam grades at Leaving
Certificate level; in sixth year, those who work part-time during termtime
achieve an average of 15.5 grade points compared with 18 for those
not working.
4.4 Factors Influencing Leaving Certificate Exam
Performance
The previous section discusses the relationship between a number of
background factors and Leaving Certificate performance. However,
many of these factors are likely to be interrelated; in order to understand
the processes shaping exam performance, it is therefore necessary to take
account of a number of factors simultaneously. In Table 4.2, we present
a series of multilevel regression models which explore the influence of
individual background and junior cycle factors on Leaving Certificate
performance. Taking advantage of the longitudinal nature of the study,
the models progressively take account of student characteristics prior to
second-level entry, followed by first year experiences, second year factors
and third year experiences. As in earlier sections, we focus on students
who took the LCE or LCVP programmes. The student cohort is
clustered within twelve case-study schools and, as a result, these students
are likely to share a number of characteristics and experiences. Using a
multilevel model takes account of this clustering and thus provides more
precise estimates of the influence of the factors examined (Goldstein,
2003).