Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

38 ENGAGING YOUNG PEOPLE?Schools (NCCA, 2008, p. 16) and Farrell’s (2007) research on LCAparticipants. Farrell found that in one Dublin school with an LCA class of17 learners, seven were special needs learners and three had special needsassistants to support them in the classroom (Farrell, 2007).Within the qualitative sample of this study, it appeared that the LCA wasbeing used by some schools to cater for the needs of students with learningdifficulties in junior cycle. All of the respondents with special needs wereadvised by teachers, principals or guidance counsellors to take LCA as amore suitable alternative to the LCE. Maurice has autism and was severelybullied throughout his second-level education. He had planned to do theLCE but was approached by the deputy principal and advised to take LCA:The deputy principal came in and just said okay there’s Transition Year, there’sthe LCA, so you should do one of them after the Junior Cert, yeah.Did you ever consider doing the ordinary Leaving Cert?Yeah I was going to do the ordinary Leaving Cert but then I had a word with thedeputy principal one day, he came up to me in the middle of the corridor and hewas like, you’re very good at computer Maurice and I think you should do theLCA, based on something along them lines.Did you look it up or investigate it [LCA] any further then?No. (Maurice, 21, completed LCA, student)Maura had a mild learning disability in school and struggled with readingboth in primary and second-level school. Her teachers in junior cyclerecommended that after her Junior Certificate she move to a school whichcatered for students with special needs. She explained how during juniorcycle she had felt ‘ashamed’ and ‘out of place’ because of her learningdifficulties. Maura feels her teacher explained the LCA to her class clearlyand she immediately knew it was what she wanted to do:He said like modules and like we’d projects and all these, doing, in each subjectthere’re kind of modules to do in each kind of area in like…When I heard thatthen, because I’m not much good with studying, like I’m more into my hands,practical work, when I heard that I was like suits me fine like. (Maura, 24,completed LCA, employed)4.3.3 STUDENTS WITH BEHAVIOURAL PROBLEMS IN JUNIORCYCLEThose who go on to take LCA tend to have more negative interaction withteachers at all time-points over the course of junior cycle. Somewhatsurprisingly perhaps, they also tended to have more positive interactionwith teachers in second and third year, with differences in the frequency ofpraise received for class and written work among students. On closerinspection, this pattern relates to the high proportion of lower streamclasses who enter LCA and who had high levels of positive and negativeinteraction with teachers because of smaller class sizes. Figure 4.5 showsthe reported patterns for third year students; those students who go on totake LCA were more likely to have been given out to for untidy work or formisbehaviour than other students.