Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

62 ENGAGING YOUNG PEOPLE?write, write … I suppose the fact that I was able to do the stuff and I wasn’tstruggling. (Barbara, 23, completed LCA, employed)Although many young people were positive about the vocational focusof the LCA programme, others were critical of the limited nature of theLCA curriculum and many would have liked to have continued with someof their junior cycle subjects:You don’t do Science, you know, and if you wanted to go into that, you couldn’t,so there is some subjects that they dropped that maybe they shouldn’t. (Ronan,25, completed LCA, apprentice)Similarly, Andrew, who went on to do an apprenticeship, regretted notbeing able to take Science while he was in LCA:I could have done Science maybe, sure I’m only saying that now because I went onto do electrician. (Andrew, 21, completed LCA, apprentice)Some of the male respondents felt that the programme should furtherincrease its vocational emphasis so that students would learn more specificoccupational skills as part of the programme:I’d change some subjects. … I think they should bring in maybe trade work intoit, which would be good, like different types of trades, you know, from carpentryto, well they do woodwork, to electricians to plastering, different trades like that Ithink. (Ronan, 25, completed LCA, apprentice)Young people taking LCA were less likely than those taking LCE orLCVP to report having a choice of subjects or modules. Some youngpeople were critical of this lack of choice:We’d no choice to pick, we were just given them subjects to do like, in the, so Iwould have changed that I think, given the choice to pick what you want to do inyour LCA like. (Linda, 21, completed LCA, student)Similarly, Alice, who did not like Engineering felt that her class wouldhave benefited from access to other subject areas:A bit of choice, yeah. What languages you want to do or Engineering or evenWoodwork would be more interesting, you know, you might find yourself makingup a locker or something. You’d never want Engineering, you know, even if theboys done that and the girls done Woodwork, you know. (Alice, 22,completed LCA, home duties)However, some acknowledged that this lack of choice most likelyreflects the small number of participants on the programme:They could only do this, that and that, I suppose there was only seven of us, ifthere was a bigger number they might have been able to offer more opportunitiesmaybe, they couldn’t offer us different subjects. … There was only a certainamount of things we had to do … Maths and all that, Construction, they werecompulsory, everything was compulsory. (Johnny, 23, completed LCA,employed)