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

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
The presence of the Transition Year (TY) programme means that
students in the cohort enter sixth year at different time-points and thus
the fieldwork for this phase of the study took place over a two-year period.
In January 2007, all sixth year 2 students were surveyed in schools
without Transition Year; in schools where Transition Year was optional,
all sixth year students were surveyed to capture those who had chosen
not to take TY. In January 2008, all sixth year students were surveyed in
schools with compulsory or optional Transition Year. In order to obtain a
‘snap-shot’ of the experiences of Leaving Certificate students, information
from the two years (2007 and 2008) was merged in order to provide
a complete picture. In total, 748 students completed questionnaires, covering
their experiences of teaching and learning in sixth year, the amount
of homework and study they did, the degree of stress they experienced
and their plans for the future.
In order to explore the factors influencing Leaving Certificate performance,
students surveyed in sixth year were asked to give permission
to access their subsequent exam results. In total, 565 students granted
such permission, making up 81 per cent of all students in the cohort who
took LCE or LCVP.
Recent research has highlighted the importance of taking account
of the ‘student voice’ and the potential contribution of the student perspective
to school improvement and policy development more generally
(Macbeath et al., 2001; Rudduck and Flutter, 2004; Sammons et
al., 1994). Student involvement can facilitate schools taking account of
the perspective of young people and can improve our understanding of
students’ experiences of teaching and learning: ‘it is important to know
what pupils think will make a difference to their commitment to learning
and, in turn, to their progress and achievement’ (Rudduck and Flutter,
2004, p. 2). Within education research, some studies have emphasised
the benefits of using focus group interviews over individual interviews
as the greater anonymity of the group environment can help individuals
disclose their opinions more freely. Moreover, there is no
2 Some of the schools differ in the nomenclature used for different year groups.
For purposes of consistency, we refer to students in the final year of a Leaving
Certificate programme as ‘sixth years’.