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

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
These students emphasised, however, that work experience had to be
meaningful and help shape their later decisions:
Realistic jobs, you see some people go on work experience and they
go and work in [name of supermarket] or [name of supermarket] and
they’re not really going to be working, really aspire to work there,
they just do it because it’s handy for them, people should go out and
try and get the jobs they want to do like. (Fig Lane, coed school,
middle-class intake)
Students in Belmore Street also felt that work experience should have
played a greater role in their education. Again, these students emphasised
having meaningful work experience more related to their everyday lives,
rather than the abstract content of many school subjects:
More experience of like the jobs that you actually will get after
school like.
… Because you’re not gonna become a poet, like things that you will
do, will need different experiences.
I think they should like take topics and some careers and do some
classes on them so you know like what it’s like and then I think you
should in the ordinary Leaving Cert have like work experience on
your curriculum. To learn actually what you want to do, see what it’s
like and experience it. (Belmore Street, girls’ school, mixed intake)
Some students who had the opportunity to participate in work experience
expressed dissatisfaction because of the short period of work experience
and access to one placement only:
We got one week of work experience last year … That wasn’t
enough.
... Some people chose something and then they didn’t enjoy it at all
and they wanted to try something else but you didn’t get another
choice. (Dawson Street, coed school, mixed intake)
Students in Barrack Street felt that they should have been brought out of
school more, on work experience or study visits. They felt that the school
was too focussed on covering the curriculum in time for the exams: