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

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
Theatre performance with arts in [name of university].
I’m the same as her.
…I want to do dancing, I want to do a two year dance course, it’s in
Dublin and I’ll do choreography and I applied for England. (Belmore
Street, girls’ school, mixed intake)
Other students discussed how they wanted to do hairdressing or social
care:
I’m either doing hair dressing in some college, I’m not too sure yet
or else social care.
Interviewer: And yourself?
I’m going for hairdressing. (Belmore Street, girls’ school, mixed intake)
Speaking with staff at Belmore Street, it was clear that the emphasis at
the school is on going to college directly after school or after a gap year:
See the numbers here are very high, ninety-two percent of them go
on to third level and interestingly I would say that that other eight
percent they go on later. (Belmore Street, staff, girls’ school, mixed
intake)
It was felt that the types of courses chosen by students ranged from
‘medicine right down to a PLC course’, with choices often influenced by
where individual guidance counsellors placed most emphasis:
What they do really is influenced as well by the guidance counsellor,
and I… and you can only see that when there’s a change in the guidance
counsellor.
…you can see the different emphasis that people put on things.
(Belmore Street, staff, girls’ school, mixed intake)
In Park Street, an all-boys secondary school, some students had just
planned for college and had not thought about their future after that
point: