Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

SCHOOL EXPERIENCES AND LEARNING PROCESSES AMONG LCA PARTICIPANTS 81into school, feel relaxed and be able to do it that way. (Siobhan, 25,completed LCA, employed)Ones that are posher than you or whatever, who had more confidence or whateverand they said, used to say to us like, oh it’s the easy way out, it’s not the realthing. … A doss year and that’s all you do. But it wasn’t like, I know it was alot different like, but they didn’t seem to understand. (Deirdre, 22, completedLCA, unemployed)The separation into different Leaving Certificate programmes was seenby some young people as resulting in a lack of social interaction betweenLCA students and their peers. This reinforced the perception of the LCAgroup as different, with some students internalising the negative labels.Sandra, for example, reported that she only socialised with people in theLCA classes:If you were mixing with anyone you were only going to be mixing with theLCA2, you weren’t mixing with anyone else in the group, like say other yearslike or anything like that. … You’d feel kind of, as if we were the two stupidgroups like and there was people saying it like as well, so you’d be thinking thatmust be the way. (Sandra, 23, completed LCA, home duties)Similarly, Linda had no contact with friends she had had in junior cycleand felt there was a gap between her class and the other Leaving Certificateclasses:When we went into fifth year there was … like just a total gap then. … Atlunch time you’d see them and that and just the fact that, I don’t know, we werein one group and then there was like the outside world. We didn’t actually haveany contact with girls that we knew when we were in third year and that. (Linda,21, completed LCA, student)In some schools, this social separation was mirrored and furtherreinforced by the provision of separate facilities for LCA students:We never had much to do with the normal Leaving Cert. … We had our ownsports events and things like that. (Tim, 21, completed LCA, unemployed)Well say there’d be plays and that but they’d be all seated, put out like andthey’d say now, they’d say LCA here, fifth year here, sixth year there, you’dalways stay kept separate like. (Sandra, 23, completed LCA, home duties)All the Leaving Certs would be brought up [at assemblies], we wouldn’t beasked. And I remember loads of times it happened and we had to go up andmake complaints to the principal about this. (Deirdre, 22, completed LCA,unemployed)Deirdre also felt that in her school, the LCA classes were given poorerfacilities, including smaller rooms and lockers:We had a gammy little room down there, and our lockers, I think we’d only halflockers, where the other Leaving Certs, we won’t go into their locker room, bigspacious thing, all their lockers and loads of benches and all, and we were