Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

130 ENGAGING YOUNG PEOPLE?through guidance counselling, she completed a course in childcare. It isinteresting to note that she observed some similarities between the PLCcourse and the project work she had done in LCA:It wasn’t totally different because it was all projects again, so, [I] was used todoing a lot of projects so I wasn’t totally shocked with all the projects [in the PLCcourse].When she completed her PLC she got a job in a playschool and at thetime of interview was about to start a new job as a nanny in a privatehouse:I went into working in playschool in [name of city] and then I went to anotherone for a year and now I’m going into work [as a nanny] in a house.To one family?One family, yeah. (Maura, 24, completed LCA, employed)Barbara also enrolled on a PLC course and did a PLC course in interiordesign on completing the LCA programme. Again, the advice of schoolpersonnel, in this case a teacher, was seen to be central to her decision. Inline with other PLC participants, parallels were drawn between the LCAprogramme and the structure and nature of the PLC programme,particularly with regard to the project-oriented nature of the twoprogrammes:Did you think it compared to the way the LCA was taught?Very similar, yeah, and really suited me like…because I really like, with thetasks and the projects, it was the same way it was done like.So that’s a good kind of experience to have?It was yeah, it stood a lot because even some of the girls that did the properLeaving [cert], they really now were, struggling because they weren’t kind of…Ithink they just weren’t able to meet the deadlines and they were kind of late witheverything and because they were late they were losing marks and, you know thattype of, in interior design there’s an awful lot of work [to do]. (Barbara, 23,completed LCA, employed)On completion of the PLC course she did work experience in a designshop and was eventually offered a full-time job there where she has nowprogressed to doing consultations with customers:It’s sales and we do a lot of curtains as well but you do consultations and that soI just started off there working as a [in] sales with the products and just likehelping people out with fabrics and stuff and basically now I call out to visithouses and do consultations and stuff like that, kind of, I just stayed there,started at the bottom and I’m kind of getting to where I want to be.That’s fairly senior if you’re out doing consultations andadvising people.Yeah, well I’m only really doing that really in the last fourteen, fifteen months,you know, so I do, there’s another girl there so I was kind of with her going to alot of houses.You’re able to train and that?And just build up your own confidence and that, I’ve started going out nowmyself. (Barbara, 23, completed LCA, employed)