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

Guidance and Decision-Making in Sixth Year 143
bers appeared to have clear ideas of the career paths of LCA students
which focussed on apprenticeships:
For the LCAs, I would try and develop, well I’ve got apprenticeships
mostly for young lads or girls who wish to go that direction and I’d
have good links with them. Also employers, I have a standard sort of
training facility with a local dentist here. He trains dental nurses and
most of them come from LCA as well. (Dawson Street, staff, coed
school, mixed intake)
Other students in Barrack Street, a working-class girls’ school, were also
frustrated by their guidance counsellor’s approach to open days for colleges
and universities. They felt that their school did not encourage them
to attend them or did not believe them when they said they were interested
in going:
Now that you need to go they won’t let you go.
Or they won’t let you go, they say…’you aren’t even interested in
this college’ and I say I want to go to the open day.
You have to see them to see if you like them, you know what I mean.
They are telling you to go to the open days, to see if you want to go
there.
You are only allowed to go to one. (Barrack Street, girls’ school,
working-class intake)
Some students felt that being given the option of three open days was not
enough and suggested that the school should provide transport for students
wishing to visit colleges:
We were given a list of open days and we had to decide to go ourselves.
You were only allowed to go to three of them, an option of three.
And like I think the school should have organised transport to the
open days as well. (Fig Lane, coed school, middle-class intake)
Other students felt that the open days were a waste of time and they
found out very little about courses and just ‘walked around’ the college: