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

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
People from professions, such as nurses and guards, in addition to representatives
from colleges and universities, were the most common type of
speaker visiting schools:
The business school from Dublin came down didn’t they?
Yeah, [name of university].
Interviewer: Were they any help?
Yeah, because it kind of showed you the facilities and what you
could do there and like the social life part. (Fig Lane, coed school,
middle-class intake)
In Belmore Street, students had a wide variety of different forms of
guidance provided by their teacher though visiting speakers and past pupils,
covering careers ranging from ‘paramedics’ to ‘accountants, auctioneers’
(girls’ school, mixed intake). In Hay Street, a working-class
school, students had a guest speaker who explained to them about doing
an apprenticeship:
One came in about, he came in about the building part of it and just
telling us what we’d need and what kind of courses we could do, the
work, so many days work and then so many in the classroom then.
What we’d be qualified as after the course finished. (Hay Street,
coed school, working-class intake)
Some students, however, appeared disappointed by guest speakers and
people that came to talk to them about various colleges. They felt that the
speakers were trying to ‘sell’ their courses and did not provide them with
specific information:
We had just talks from colleges, they don’t tell you about the jobs,
they’re just trying to sell you, get you to go there.
… It’s not really people who are in doing the stuff.
It’s not really about courses or anything, it’s just about the colleges.
(Dawson Street, coed school, mixed intake)