Best Career Guidance in Clare

Clare is an interesting one, because on paper the county has a lot going for it — Shannon's aviation leasing and pharma sector on one side, TUS's Shannon and Ennis facilities close by, easy reach into Limerick and Galway for third level. And yet Clare parents ask me the exact same question I hear everywhere else: who actually has the time to sit down with my child and work out what fits them?

The problem isn't Clare's schools — it's the ratio behind every school in the country

The Institute of Guidance Counsellors put a real figure on this in their submission to the Department of Education: non-DEIS schools are staffed at roughly one guidance counsellor per 583 students. Their most recent national survey found that 92% of school-based guidance counsellors say they don't have enough time to meet student need, up from 83% just a few years before. A Clare secondary school, however good its guidance counsellor is, is working the same impossible caseload as one in Dublin or Cork — there just isn't a way to give every student the hour they'd genuinely benefit from.

Private guidance is available, and it's just as expensive here as anywhere

Clare has access to private career coaching, either locally or online, but the price doesn't shift much by county: €80 to €200 per session nationally, usually needing a handful of sessions before it's genuinely worth it. That's a real cost for most families to carry on top of an already expensive Leaving Cert year.

Where I'd actually start

Free first, always: CareersPortal.ie and Qualifax.ie, Ireland's official National Learners' Database. Both are excellent for browsing every CAO course and PLC on offer, wherever it's based — genuinely useful for Clare students weighing up staying close to Limerick or Galway against going further afield. I recommend both constantly.

What they won't do is tell your child which specific course out of hundreds actually suits them, and that's the exact gap CourseCompass fills. The three tools I use most with students: Course Compass, an AI-matched shortlist of CAO courses with a full written booklet you can bring into a guidance appointment; PLC Compass, matched against over 1,870 PLC courses; and Apprenticeship Compass, matched against every SOLAS apprenticeship — a genuinely strong option for Clare students given the amount of aviation, engineering and trades work centred around Shannon.

Bought separately those three run about €65. As the 5th & 6th Year Bundle — which also includes the Learning Style Test and the full Career Investigations library — it's €49.99 instead of €79.95. Under €50, done from home, with results that stay with your child for life rather than ending when a single paid session does.

I use it in my own school, and I'd say exactly the same thing to any Clare parent asking me privately: it doesn't replace a real conversation with a guidance counsellor, but it means that conversation starts from something real your child has already worked through, not a shrug and a "not sure yet."

I'm building out my own page properly at the moment — find me on Instagram @irishguidance.ie, or email me directly at shellyogorm@gmail.com. I answer everything myself.