Ask Brian: My daughter has begun sixth year and seems to be floundering

PROBLEM: My daughter has just started sixth year, so she is facing in to her Leaving Cert. She's a bright girl with good ability but seems to be floundering. She's unfocused, disorganised in study, more interested in her social life and clothes – anything other than settling down to study. We try to be supportive, but she's a teenager and won't discuss how she might handle the year or tease out her options after school. What can we do?

ADVICE: There is no magic formula for ensuring that a career plan will be waiting for every Leaving Cert student in September 2016. All you can do is point some basic facts out to your daughter: the process to get into higher-education courses is getting more competitive each year, as the numbers taking the Leaving Cert increase by about 2,000 annually; and the supports she is enjoying from teachers and friends will dissolve and disappear at the end of May next year.

If your daughter has a guidance counsellor in school, you might suggest she seek an appointment immediately to explore her options. If your daughter can’t easily get an appointment as a result of the cutbacks in guidance counselling support nationally since 2013, you should ask the principal to ensure she is provided with such an appointment immediately in order to explore her options for after she leaves school.

She is entitled to “appropriate guidance” on all of her possible course and career options under section 9C of the Education Act, so don’t be fobbed off with excuses. A guidance counsellor is trained and skilled at helping young people look for patterns within their life to date in order to help them discern possible appropriate steps after finishing school.

Quite often, such a professional session will help your daughter identify a specific interest or aptitude to be developed and explored at a deeper level, through a further education and training course, a higher education programme via the Central Applications Office, or outside Ireland through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) or the European Universities Central Application Support Service, or through volunteering in Ireland or abroad for a year.

Even if the session gives your daughter only some details of what steps she could take, it would be useful.My book Start Your Career Journey Here (Education Company of Ireland) is designed to take a sixth-year student through all of the options available after leaving school. It is laid out month by month, which might help her navigate her way through the various options and application processes.

• Your questions answered by education analyst Brian Mooney. Email queries to askbrian@irishtimes.com

• Dates for the diary: the first deadlines for UK university applications, via Ucas, is October 15th, for medicine, dentistry and veterinary, and for Oxford and Cambridge. uUcasCAS.com