Student Experiences of the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme

SCHOOL EXPERIENCES AND LEARNING PROCESSES AMONG LCA PARTICIPANTS 77and your opinion was always heard. (Mary, 22, completed LCA, homeduties)In contrast to the majority of respondents who felt their relationshipwith teachers improved, some young people highlighted more negativerelations with teachers and reported a lack of interest among someteachers. Linda stated that in fifth year her class did very little work and sherecalled how as a group they realised they had not covered enough of thecurriculum to pass LCA:In fifth year now, it was kind of the year that we didn’t learn much and thensixth year it was all thrown on us. Everything was thrown on us that we felt wehad to learn and we kind of started stressing then thinking that, this isn’t goodenough, we should have learned all this last year, you know, but we didn’t doanything about it like. (Linda, 21, completed LCA, student)She felt that some of the teachers did not give the class their fullattention, leaving the class for long periods and allowing the students to doas they wished:Like two or three of them weren’t at all, I don’t think had any interest, ourReligion teacher, he’d talk about football with the boys like. … Yeah, there wasone teacher, the IT teacher, very lackadaisical you know, you could literally doanything on the internet, go on the computer, go on the internet and do anything,about ten minutes like, we’d have stuff to do and that and then that’d be it reallyand then all the, most of the rest of the teachers are really good like, trying theirbest. (Linda, 21, completed LCA, student)In keeping with the lack of challenge in LCA schoolwork reported bysome young people, some felt that LCA teachers should be moremotivated and give students greater encouragement. Shirley, for example,felt that the teachers needed to ‘push’ the students more:Was there anything you would change about the LCA?Just to have the teachers that are going to push you and get your work done andhelp you through it like, than having teachers that are just sitting there just sayingah yeah, do it if you want, you know, you need, definitely need a push, and again,you don’t need teachers that are going to be too strict to turn you off it either.(Sandra, 23, completed LCA, home duties)Rebecca also felt that teachers needed to be more attentive and examinestudents work to make sure it was done correctly:Just a bit more pushing to get you like, to do all your stuff, trying, getting [you] togo over your stuff to make sure it’s perfect like, yeah you’ll get a good mark on itor whatever, I don’t think they went over any of our stuff. (Rebecca, 21,dropped out of LCA, home duties)Jackie felt that the relationship with her teachers worsened in LCA asthey treated her like a child:I felt I was being treated like I was in second year, I honestly did, like a littlechild.…Because I knew people from school as well that did the straight Leaving