Why Our School Is Moving to CourseCompass for 2026/27

Right, I'll say this upfront: I don't usually write "we've switched to a new platform" posts, because I find most of them are basically ads with a lanyard photo attached. But we trialled something properly this summer, it worked, and I think other counsellors deserve the straight version of why — including the actual cost, which these posts always seem to leave out for some reason. So here it is. Our school is moving the whole guidance programme onto CourseCompass's School Package for 2026/27.

The actual problem I was trying to solve

Every guidance counsellor I know is running the same impossible sum: one of us, a few hundred students, and decisions that will not wait until next Tuesday. I didn't need another tool that hands me more information to sit down and read on my own time — I have plenty of that already, thanks. What I needed was something that gets a student's own self-knowledge in front of them before they ever sit in my office, so the appointment is a conversation instead of me starting from zero every single time.

That's genuinely the pitch CourseCompass makes for itself, and it's the only reason I bothered trialling it instead of deleting the email like I do with most of these.

What you're actually getting, because vague descriptions annoy me

Twelve assessments. Not a personality quiz with a nice colour scheme — proper written reports, one per student, plus a fuller staff version. The four I'd call the core of it: Course Compass, which matches a student to actual named CAO courses with a written reason for each one; the Subject Interest Test, which is where I now start every 1st to 3rd year subject-choice conversation; Apprenticeship Compass, for the students the CAO genuinely doesn't suit; and PLC Compass, because not everyone needs or wants a degree straight out of school. The other eight cover learning style, study skills, wellbeing, career values, personality and teamwork, digital skills and transition readiness — all included, no extra charge, either allocated by me or requested by the student themselves.

131 printable worksheets — the whole library's here — 1st year right through to TY and LCA, mapped to the NCGE strands, and auto-branded with our own crest, which is a small thing but it made our principal genuinely happy.

CAO points intelligence. The 2026 vs 2025 comparison I've linked from this blog more than once now, covering 1,395 courses, plus a proper points calculator.

Backdoor Routes — 2,499 documented alternative ways into 1,009 CAO courses, including 216 PLC awards mapped to exactly what they open up.

Accommodation guides for every campus, actually sourced rather than guessed at — I check the accommodation section constantly in the run-up to results.

Counsellor controls that I actually use daily now — I can hold any assessment's result back until I've sat down with the student and talked it through, approve an extra assessment request in one click instead of it getting lost in an email, and I always see the full report before they do.

60+ Career Investigations — here's the list — each with teaching slides, a written task and a completion cert, ready to drop straight into a careers class or set as TY work.

A CV Builder that walks a student through their part-time job, their TY placement, their clubs, and turns it into something they can actually send — worth a look here.

SUSI, DARE and HEAR, explained properly — SUSI eligibility, DARE eligibility and HEAR eligibility — plain-English pages I now just send parents directly instead of explaining the same thresholds for the fortieth time.

And Classroom Resources, coming soon — ready-to-teach 40-minute slide decks, paired with the worksheets already in the library. Not live yet, but I'm genuinely looking forward to it.

What it actually costs, because I hate when this bit is missing

Straight from CourseCompass's own pricing, billed annually, per student:

Access	Per student / year
Senior Cycle (TY, 5th and 6th year)	€20.00
Whole school (all year groups)	€16.00

We went whole-school. €16 a student, for the year, for everything above. That's less than one set of grinds, for a full guidance programme I'd otherwise be cobbling together from six different bookmarks and a filing cabinet.

There's a free trial — no card needed, start it here — and honestly, that's the only reason I trusted this enough to bring it to our budget meeting. I ran real students through it before I asked the school to pay a cent.

The question everyone asks me, so I'll just answer it here

Where does the data go? I asked this before I asked anything else. Per CourseCompass's privacy policy, a student's assessment data sits with our school specifically — visible to our staff and to that student, not pooled across every school using the platform. That mattered to me a lot more than any feature on the list above.

What I'm actually hoping for this year

I'm not expecting software to do my job for me, and nothing about this is sold that way either. What I do want is a student walking into their appointment having already flagged something they don't understand or don't agree with, instead of opening with "I don't know what I want to do." That's a far better place to start a conversation from, and it's the whole reason we made the switch.

If your own department is on the fence, don't take my word for any of it — the free trial will tell you in a week whether it actually fits how your school runs guidance, and that's a far better test than a blog post, mine very much included.