For school leavers, the weeks and months after the Leaving Certificate can feel as though they come down to one thing: points. Get the points for your chosen course and you move on to the next stage; miss them and suddenly the future you had mapped out can look rather different.
But the path from school to employment is not always quite so linear. Further education and training (FET) offers school leavers another way to build qualifications, gain practical experience and progress into either employment or higher education – and, for many, it’s an opportunity to work out what they actually want from their career along the way.
For Olivia Campbell, that route became important when her Leaving Cert did not go according to plan. Campbell had always dreamed of working in radio and hoped to study media after school but sitting her Leaving Cert in the first year following the Covid pandemic proved particularly difficult.
Campbell has dyslexia and a joint condition, and had been provided with assistive technology that allowed her to dictate her exams. On the first day, however, the software stopped working. She had to type instead, something she found both slow and painful, and says she was unable to finish several of her written exams and her points suffered as a result. Her desired course was suddenly out of reach.
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“I was left completely stuck and didn’t know where to go next,” she says.
The answer came through a family friend who had studied at Ballyfermot College of Further Education (BCFE) and suggested Campbell take a look at the courses on offer. There, she found a post-Leaving Certificate (PLC) course specifically focused on radio.
“I have always had a passion for radio, I wanted to study media for the main purpose being a gateway into radio,” she says. “I have the gift of the gab, as they say.”
Campbell enrolled in Media and Broadcasting, a year-long PLC course at BCFE, followed by two years in Radio & Broadcasting, and a final year in Media Production Management, which granted her a Level 8 degree.
“They have a way of preparing you for real industry jobs instead of just sitting in lectures and listening to someone talk about working,” she says. “They have studios and facilities to practice in, [and] they have smaller classes so you get more of a personal experience in class and grow proper connections with the lecturers. I found this really helpful.”
Those connections extended beyond the classroom. Campbell recalls industry professionals coming into the college to speak to students, while lecturers used their own contacts to introduce them to people already working in media. “That’s where we got the most ‘unfiltered’ advice,” she says.
And there were opportunities to put that advice into practice. Through Erasmus+, a European Union programme that offers students the chance to study abroad, Campbell travelled to Finland to explore her interest in media management and later spent a month in Spain presenting her own show on an English-speaking radio station.
Back in Ireland, she has worked with Radio Nova, Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio and The 90s Network, a 1990s-themed community radio station. But one of the more unexpected outcomes of the course was discovering that radio did not have to be her only option.
“We got to start a social media account for our course and it did well considering it’s an account for a college course,” she says. “It built my confidence to branch out and look at more media jobs that I can do alongside radio.”
Campbell subsequently began doing content creation work for businesses and colleges – another avenue she hadn’t considered when she first arrived at Ballyfermot. “The whole experience showed me that I have so much more than just one media skill.” She is now putting the finishing touches on a thesis on pirate radio and is ready to turn her attention back to broadcasting.
If Campbell pursued FET through her initial PLC course because her Leaving Cert results closed off her original route, Tafadzwa Magoronga came to it from a very different direction.
Originally from Marondera in Zimbabwe, Magoronga moved to Ireland in 2022 and joined Selskar College in Wexford, during fifth year. He had completed the equivalent of the Junior Cycle in his home country and, fortunately, found many of the subjects familiar.
‘I could relate what I was learning in class to how it’s used in the workplace and I could talk to people who are already working within the industry and learn from their experiences’
— Tafadzwa Magoronga, Gorey Institute of Further Education graduate
“The first week I was a bit shy,” he says, “but I had a few people who were looking after me.”
Little more than a year later, Magoronga completed his Leaving Cert with about 450 points. He had applied to several colleges and had plans in place, but then discovered that, having only recently moved to Ireland, he did not meet the continuous education requirements for certain financial supports.
He looked at his options.
A PLC course seemed one possible way forward and, while researching courses, he came across the two-year Accounting Technician programme at Gorey Institute of Further Education. Accounting wasn’t entirely new territory: Magoronga had studied it in Zimbabwe and had always imagined eventually working in finance, but something about this particular course stood out.
“I saw how in demand the course was among employers and that you could work at the same time as you were learning,” he says. “I could relate what I was learning in class to how it’s used in the workplace and I could talk to people who are already working within the industry and learn from their experiences.”
It was through a work placement that things came together for Magoronga. He joined a local accountancy firm, continued working there during the summer and ultimately moved into employment with the same company.
“I’ve heard this said over the last two years, and it’s true: it’s a great way to get your foot in the door,” he says. “I started working there during the summer and they got to know me from that and it really helped to jump-start my career.”
His time at Gorey also took him further afield. Magoronga travelled to Spain through Erasmus+, where he worked in the finance department of a small pottery company. The sunny weather wasn’t the only highlight though; the experience also gave him a glimpse of just how broadly he might eventually use his qualification.
Working in a smaller business made him realise that his future did not necessarily have to follow the traditional accountancy-firm route. “There are lots of opportunities,” he says, “it was eye opening.”
Magoronga is now working while continuing his accountancy exams and is committed to a training contract that will see him fully qualified by 2029.
Campbell and Magoronga may have arrived at FET under very different circumstances, but there are striking similarities in what they found once they got there: practical learning, close contact with industry, international experience and, perhaps most importantly, the space to discover that a qualification doesn’t have to point towards just one job.
For Campbell, the Leaving Cert result that once left her feeling “completely stuck” has ultimately led to a degree, the opportunity to study abroad and the beginnings of a successful career in media.
Looking back, she is conscious of how final disappointing Leaving Cert results can feel when they first arrive. “It isn’t the end of the world,” she says. “[It] certainly feels like it but there is so much out there for you. I’d say take every opportunity that comes at you, apply for everything and stay positive.”
Magoronga’s experience has taught him something slightly different. Choosing what comes after school need not be about finding the one route that will determine the rest of your working life. Sometimes, the value lies in finding somewhere that allows you to begin – and to keep your options open while you do.
