These helpdesk questions were asked online by students and parents and answered by guidance counsellors Brian Howard and Deirdre Garrett

I`m thinking of repeating my Leaving Cert could you tell me if there are any dedicated repeat Leaving Cert schools or grind schools in north Dublin as I don`t want to repeat in my old school. Or where can I source that information?

Probably the best place to start your search is on the Qualifax website qualifax.ie and do a course search with repeat in the title. I did a quick search and came up with Plunkett College, Pearse College, Rathmines and Ringsend. The listing in Qualifax will give you the contact details for the colleges. Some secondary schools in your area may also take repeat students so ringing some of them may get you more information.

Our son is likely to have got enough points to do an engineering course but he did not get a C3 in honours maths. One option would be to repeat just maths next year. Would this satisfy the requirement if he got the grade then?  

Yes, you can generally combine Leaving Certificates for the purposes of meeting entry requirements so, yes, your son could use his maths HC3 from next year to matriculate and his points from this year's sitting of the Leaving Certificate.

I was wondering if I repeated the Leaving Cert, and want to go for medicine, do I still have to do Irish, English and maths if I passed them the first time round?

Undergraduate entry to medicine for school leavers is based on getting 480 points and meeting all of the entry requirements in the same sitting of the Irish Leaving Cert plus completing the required HPat entrance exam.

This means that you would have to repeat English, Irish (for most colleges but not all), a third language (for most colleges not all) and maths.

Go to cao.ie and take a look under student resources. There is a lot of information there on undergraduate medicine.