At least 4,000 secondary school students attended a careers fair held at Limerick Racecourse yesterday. The event was organised by the local branch of the Irish Guidance Councillors, and is now in its fifth year running. There were information stalls from over 50 institutions, who informed students about potential educational and employment opportunities available for when they leave school.
Mary Kearney, chairperson of the organising committee, told this reporter that the popularity of this event has been increasing with each year. The event attracts students from all over the Mid-West region. Outlining one advantage of this careers fair, Ms Kearney noted that in the past, local school-leavers would have to travel to Dublin to attend the careers exhibition at the RDS, as there was no similar event in this part of the country.
She spoke of the merits of the Greenmount venue. She was very praiseworthy of the staff and management of Limerick Racecourse, while also noting that from a teacher’s perspective the day is more manageable because rather than managing a group of students for a four-hour each leg return journey to Dublin they can be in and out of the Patrickswell venue within an hour and a half. She also said that there is less potential for discipline problems at her group’s venue, because the Careers Exhibition is the only thing happening on the day at the racecourse, there is much less chance of students becoming distracted or wandering off – their focus remains on career options.
Among the third-level institutions represented at the fair, UL, UCC and LIT seemed to be the popular choices among students. The guards, army and teacher training courses offered at Mary Immaculate College also proved to be popular draws. Institutions offering Post Leaving Certificate courses were kept busy with inquiries, with many students seeking to go onto further education using this route. Three talks were also given throughout the day by UCAS, the body responsible for handling applications to full-time degree programmes in Britain. These were attended in great numbers.
The organisers noted that as has been the case each year they have run the exhibition, popularity of the courses on offer varied according to gender, with nursing and language courses tending to be more popular with girls while boys tended to gravitate in greater numbers towards more technical programmes. One possible reason given for this trend by Ms Kearney is the fact that often girls’ schools simply do not offer technical subjects to Leaving Cert students so they would not be exposed to the skills needed to go onto further study in that area.
Regarding the issue of gender imbalances in certain employment sectors, Lieutenant Nessa Maloney of the Irish Naval Service, a male-dominated institution which only began offering cadetships to women in 1994, said that her organisation actively seek female recruits by attending girls’ schools to give demonstrations about working in the naval service. Anne-Marie Hannon, of the admissions division of Mary Immaculate College, which offers a number of primary teacher training courses, noted that although primary school teaching is one area where females vastly outnumber males, her institution does not specifically target male students when promoting their B.Ed course in the same way the navy does to females. However, they may do so in the future.
Photo: Kman999
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