Mr. Martin Scattergood:

I am a sheet metal worker and am now fully qualified now. At school, I liked science, technology, engineering and maths and I always preferred to be much more hands-on in my life. When doing the junior certificate examination, I had to concentrate and knuckle down to do well and pass. I passed, but I found it very difficult and had to do a lot of work for it. I knew at an early stage that I wanted to do something with my hands and decided to go down that route. After doing the junior certificate examination, I knew I would struggle doing the leaving certificate examination. I heard about the leaving certificate applied, LCA, through a friend. He had done it in another school. It is much more hands-on. The school I was in did not allow me to do art, metalwork, woodwork and computers at the same time, but they would have allowed students to do all the science subjects. The timetable in the school did not suit, so I moved school and took the LCA which included art, metalwork, woodwork, computers and many other more hand-on subjects and outdoor activities. This opened doors into an apprenticeship for me. When I left school, I had done all the subjects in school. I had completed projects. I had a lot of worksheets and so on. We had done big projects in school, so I was able to go straight into an apprenticeship. As someone who struggled in a normal academic leaving certificate class, I think students should have different routes available to follow a more practical route in STEM.