Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

60 ENGAGING YOUNG PEOPLE?Like maybe with the Leaving Cert you’d have French, Irish, Maths, maybewould be the three subjects that you hated, where with LCA you might have onesubject you hated and then you will have three nice ones that you enjoy going to …I think it was broken up way better than what the Leaving Cert was. (Mary,22, completed LCA, home duties)Many respondents referred to the skills and experience they gained fromtheir involvement in the group business enterprise task:They’d ask us as a class to do a fundraising event, you know and how to makemoney as a business, you know what I mean, to show that we could, you know,set up a little business and that, so we organise a committee in the class, who’d bethe chairperson, who’d be the vice chairperson, then right down to who’s thetreasurer you know, so we organised, I can remember one, it was a footballtournament for first years in the school … and we all got to manage a team andall. It was just different now, it was exciting you know, you didn’t realise howquick it was going either because you’re enjoying it like, you know. Not reallyanyone would be coming into school saying oh, this thing’s on today. (Andrew,21, completed LCA, apprentice)We got told to do different projects and we made things and you know, there’s alittle business enterprise that we did … we made and sold candles… I never usedto be good at working out like Maths and doing things with businesses, but doingthat little business enterprise it’s kind of given me a little bit of a business mind.(Tim, 21, completed LCA, unemployed)The vocational specialism courses were seen as having a more practicalemphasis, thus enhancing the skills and knowledge of participants:Well you have to go outside and plant stuff [in the Agriculture course], so you’dhave to write about it as well and you know, it was mainly outdoor stuff and thenyou’d have to come in and you’d have to explain everything you done and you dopresentations on it and stuff like that … and I thought it was interesting, veryinteresting. (Linda, 21, completed LCA, student)Other respondents were drawn to the practical nature of the curriculumwhere they found they had the time and support to develop theirconfidence and experience across various subject areas:I did a portfolio, an Art portfolio. … There was another teacher, an Art teacherthat took me at lunch time and she had me out to do a portfolio and I got myportfolio done and … I was able to use that when I went to college, to get intocollege so, that was just a big, big bonus for me, it was a lot of hard work, but Igot it done. (Barbara, 23, completed LCA, employed)Going around sourcing stuff, pricing stuff for that, we got props for the back of thestage, got our costumes, we made a lot of our costumes and made a lot of thebackdrops as well and yeah we did it for kids and we raised money then and wegave it to the home across the road and then they asked us to do the Christmasconcert so then we did it then again for the Christmas concert, we used our wholestage for the whole thing, I found that was brilliant. … Good experience, build