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

Looking Back, Moving Forward 201
Staff also suggested that some of the students at the school would enter
employment directly through their family businesses and perhaps do a
‘refresher course’ instead of a college degree:
Their families are key business people, and they will actually, you
know, will go back into their business having spent their six years
here and then do some refresher courses on some aspects of the business
but not necessarily take college degrees. (Fig Lane, staff, coed
school, middle-class intake)
In the other middle-class school, Harris Street, the group of students interviewed
were also clear about the specific courses that they had applied
for and the majority had specifically chosen the college that they would
like to go to:
I want to do veterinary nursing but I’m going to have to do science
first.
Interviewer: Ok, yourself?
I want to do human nutrition in [name of university].
I want to do history and politics in [name of university].
I want to do commerce in [name of university].
Engineering and I don’t know where.
Product design in [name of university]. (Harris Street, girls’ school,
middle-class intake)
Students spoke about their first and second choices and about how their
decisions would be based on the number of points gained in their exams
and their eligibility for certain courses (see Chapter Five). There appeared
to be a wide variety of choices among students at this school
whose preferred college choices ranged from teaching to journalism:
I want to go to Pat’s to do primary school teaching and then hopefully
just be a primary school teacher.
Marino primary teaching as well.
I don’t know.