Relocating to Ireland to do Leaving Cert rather than A Levels

[princeofpersian]

I am from Dublin. Primary and secondary school in Dublin. Undergraduate in Dublin. Masters in England. Worked in Dublin for three years before relocating to London. Wife is Australian. Two daughters, two school years apart. Currently coming to end of state primary school in London.

We're debating whether at 16 post-GCSEs it might make more sense for them to move to Ireland and do Irish Leaving Cert rather than stay in London and do A-levels.

Pros of doing Irish Leaving Cert:

• Study 7 subjects rather than 3/4 as for A-level so better for a generalist. Even for someone who has a clear idea what they want it can be good to be able to keep up a modern language as well as doing science subjects. A bit more of a challenge starting university, particularly in engineering/science, as Leaving Certificate level obviously is not as high as A-level.

• Fees at fee-paying school in Dublin are a fraction of independent day schools in London. About 1/3 of the cost.

• Admission to Irish universities is solely on grades (except for a few exceptions such as medicine where there is also an assessment). It's difficult to get admitted to an Irish university with A-levels. Need to take 4 A-levels to get points corresponding to 6 Irish Leaving Cert subjects. General perception that Irish universities want to limit number of undergrad admissions from England because otherwise they would be overwhelmed. Studying for Leaving Cert gives certainty about university entry (subject to getting the grades) with cost of university EUR 3,000 per year compared with £9,250 per year in England.

• Apart from Oxbridge, getting admitted to an English university with an Irish Leaving Cert does not seem to be more difficult. Daughters would have the advantage of having GCSE grades in addition to Irish Leaving Cert which should make them more "standard" from the perspective of English universities.

• Particularly in terms of how Covid handled Irish system seems to work more fairly and be more robust than the English system.

Issues as follows:

• No girls boarding schools in Ireland apart from two in Tipperary (in the same town!) which seem like lovely schools but are nothing exceptional in terms of academics. From people I know who attended the mixed boarding schools in Dublin, e.g. St Andrew's and Wesley, I would not want my children going there. Only girls only boarding option in Dublin is Alexandra College.

• Alternatives to boarding are to attend a day school or Institute of Education two year programme and live in digs. My sister lives on her own in Dublin and is close with my daughters and would be happy to have them, but I think it might be too much for her.

I think I've written more than enough so very happy to get some thoughts.

Most fee paying Irish secondaries are very over subscribed and demographics for the next few years will make pressure for places even worse. You'd be lucky to get a 5th year place in a high preforming school.
Grind schools aren't a school type experience either, so your kids would miss out on lots.
If you really want to do this, you'll have to look far and wide for any school which might take them.

@mathanxiety

HandScreen - not if they stay with their aunt in Dublin.

Ah, sorry, I'd missed that.

@lockdownmadnessdotcom, you don't know what you can do until you try or until you get a teacher willing to make sure you understand the material.

It's clearly still acceptable for girls and women to say they are useless at maths, and the myths of natural ability and the born all-rounder look to be unshakeable at this point.

A system where wide areas of intellectual activity can be dropped at an early age reinforces sex discrimination, reinforces notions of female vs. male brains, and holds women back.

A young person can try their hardest to attain well at a subject they find difficult, but you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
@RampantIvy
There are all sorts of resources online for students needing extra support. You can indeed make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It takes is motivation. There are all sorts of incentives for English and Welsh students to write off a subject they find challenging. There are all sorts of incentives for Irish LC students to engage with the challenging subjects and work really hard.

There is the opportunity to study lc subjects at higher or ordinary level. There is also a leaving cert applied, which is more hands on, designed to keep people in education. And post leaving cert courses which act as a bridge to third level.

And don't forget the LC vocational programme, which focuses on preparing them for work and enterprise. They sit it alongside the traditional LC.

A system where wide areas of intellectual activity can be dropped at an early age reinforces sex discrimination, reinforces notions of female vs. male brains, and holds women back.

A good school doesn't allow that to happen. You seem to have some odd and fixed ideas. At DD's school there were as many girls as boys who took STEM subjects at A level.

There are all sorts of resources online for students needing extra support

How do you motivate an unmotivated student to access these resources?

You can indeed make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

No you can't.

Sorry, but I competely disagree. As a student aged 21 one of my subjects was economics. I found it so dull and just couldn't engage with it. I passed, but only just. The economics lecturer was my favourite lecturer as well.

Many years later when studying preofessional marketing qualifications, one of my subjects was economics. Again, I just found it so unbelievably dull. I worked much harder at this than my other subjects, but still couldn't engage with the subject. I scraped a pass in economics.

@lockdownmadnessdotcom

Also - and I know this is not considered a good thing in the UK and Ireland - but the US liberal arts undergraduate education is a fabulous model. My humanities children still had to take calculus/labs/science/art. My engineering child still had to take art/humanities/music courses

What makes you think this is not considered to be a good thing? There are liberal arts degrees in the UK - and they require high grades eg Exeter wants AAA.

Also UCD offer a liberal arts programme .

@turkeyboots

Most fee paying Irish secondaries are very over subscribed and demographics for the next few years will make pressure for places even worse. You'd be lucky to get a 5th year place in a high preforming school. Grind schools aren't a school type experience either, so your kids would miss out on lots. If you really want to do this, you'll have to look far and wide for any school which might take them.

It is so bizarre this thread popped into my head tonight as some random fb group I am in had a post from a lady in Galway, looking for a host family for a 5th Spanish pupil admitted into a local state secondary but with nowhere to live. All the comments were to do with the welfare of the child, who would look after her etc. So apparently there are some state secondaries that take international students living in host families for senior cycle.

A good school doesn't allow that to happen. You seem to have some odd and fixed ideas. At DD's school there were as many girls as boys who took STEM subjects at A level.
Let's face it, most schools are not good schools or even good enough schools. One third of British school leavers are functionally illiterate.
Your observation of STEM preference in your DC's school is not reflective of the wider UK picture.

How do you motivate an unmotivated student to access these resources?
You work hard to engage them in a conversation where they articulate their fears, difficulties, and issues about their self image.

You set up a university admissions system that rewards effort in challenging subjects.

You explain to them that getting into (for example) art school, and becoming a puppeteer, requires effort in areas not directly related to art, and you try to support them in every way you can to get over this hurdle. You can remind them that they will need to do very mundane and not at all creative chores like keeping accounts, filing taxes, negotiating studio rent, etc exactly as if they were setting up a beige paint shop, and that simply adulting means they will also have to maintain a car, shop for groceries, cook, keep a clean home, manage their time sensibly, and lots of other stuff completely unrelated to creating puppets and doing puppet shows around the country.
www.ncad.ie/files/undergrad_files/NCAD_2021_Minimum_Entry_Requirements_.pdf

If all of that fails, you recalibrate expectations and direct a student's attention to a third level institution whose entry requirements are not as rigorous, or help to figure out a more circuitous path to a certain career.

If a student is experiencing a deep crisis of confidence and is lacking any sense of direction, maybe find a therapist.

Silk purse/sow's ear
Finding the energy to work at a dull subject is a function of maturity, and understanding that not all students are going to find the subject you teach riveting is part of the role of a good teacher. If you were truly working hard and still only managed to scrape a pass, then your problem may have been an ineffective teacher providing insufficient feedback, a lack of confidence on your part, or an inability for some reason to seek help.

Learning to learn is a vital element of education. You don't learn to learn very efficiently if you stick to your comfort zone.

Fwiw, here are the subjects available (subject to teacher availability and timetable constraints) for the LC in Ireland, and a description of the levels available too.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaving_Certificate_(Ireland)
It's not the brutal, one-size-fits-all regime some may imagine.

There are many avenues to a degree:
www.qualifax.ie/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=15?Mainsec=courses&Subsec=course_details&ID=21743

Waves to @eggandonion

I think this is a great idea and it’s given me a lot of food for thought as I’m an Irish person in London married to an Englishman. I’d love to be able to move home with our future family. I think Villiers in Limerick is also a boarding school, it’s mixed sex and has a lot of international students.

The OP is looking for Catholic schools.

@lockdownmadnessdotcom
"As for the high uni fees in England - they won't have to pay them back if they don't live here - and with their EU and Australian citizenships, that seems quite likely.*"
*
Interesting. I thought they expect you to still pay the 9% and if you don't will charge a fixed monthly payment. If you never plan to return to the UK can they not enforce this?

@SionnachRua

You don't have to do STEM subjects to LC level. Well, aside from Maths as that is core. If you wanted to take Music, Art, French and Religion as your optional 4 subjects no one's stopping you (apart from school timetables). And if you're weak in Maths, you can do what I did and drop to Ordinary level maths while concentrating on your 7th subject instead.

That's right. My DD has chosen languages, music and history for her optional subjects, following her interests.

CliffsofMohair that's right re international students. There are around ten from various European countries in my DD's school in 5th year this year. There were also some last year in TY. They stayed with host families. It was a strange sort of experience with a good chunk of the year in lockdown though.

Actually you are expected to pay loans back even if you work abroad. The repayment thresholds are adjusted to reflect local salaries. Countries like Aus, US and EU are popular places for loan recipients to work (don't forget we give fee loans to EU students - for the moment) - HMRC will get their money somehow.

In my son's school it's strongly encouraged to take a science subject at Leaving Cert and the majority of the students do. As regards core/option subjects it can vary somewhat between schools. Maths, Irish and English are always core but in my son's school so too is an MFL, so he had no choice about doing one, despite it not being a strength. Anyone with an Irish exemption in his school isn't just allowed drop to 6 subjects either, and Geography is compulsory instead of Irish for them.

It's worth noting that as well as the usual 7 exam subjects there are typically 3 non-exam Core ones which can include P.E., R.E. and SPHE (for those not taking exam Religion or P.E ).

I can’t imagine sending my kids abroad to school at all at 16 unless they were completely committed to the idea.

If you’re worrying about the narrow curriculum at a level - which I think is fair- then I would be seeing where they can do the IB close to home

I found two weeks of exchange students tough going!
Our school also encouraged a science, and dropping mfl was frowned upon. I heard from a reliable source that Irish graduates have very good writing skills, as English remains a core subject. Although the angst over the poets on the paper is something else!

We actually explored the possibility of A levels for DS as an alternative to Leaving Cert. We felt the specialisation in depth in 3 subjects had a lot to recommend it and would suit him particularly. However, we couldn't find anywhere that offered a programme so he had to stick with the LC. He struggled with having so many subjects and he had to put in a great deal of extra effort to just scrape by in some of his weaker ones. However, he did pull through in the end, albeit with dropping levels in some subjects. If he'd been able to take A levels he would definitely not have taken MFL. Neither would he have taken Maths or Geography, subjects that he overcame a strong dislike of and which are proving useful now in what he has (finally!) decided he wants to do. I can see the merits of both systems. Now, in retrospect DS is glad he has the broader range of subjects under his belt but he would admit it was hard going at the time.