Guidance Counsellors in Clare: What the Service Looks Like in 2026

Guidance in Clare, by the numbers

• 16 post-primary schools in County Clare, teaching 9,521 students (2025/26)
• 6 are run by Limerick and Clare ETB, 6 are voluntary secondary, 3 are community schools and 1 is a comprehensive
• 3 are DEIS schools, and none are fee-charging
• The number of guidance counsellors working in Clare is not published. The Department of Education allocates guidance hours to individual schools through the staffing schedule; it does not publish a county-level figure, and no such dataset exists on data.gov.ie.

Because no Clare school is fee-charging, every school in the county draws on the Free Education Scheme allocation. That makes the arithmetic unusually clean: the difference in guidance provision across Clare is down to DEIS status and enrolment size, not to fees.

What one guidance allocation has to cover

Every post-primary school receives a Whole School Guidance allocation, calculated as the difference between a pupil-teacher ratio of 19:1 and a reduced ratio — 18.4 for a non-DEIS school in the Free Education Scheme, 17.65 for a DEIS school and 17.36 for DEIS Plus.

• 18.86 hours a week — Free Education Scheme, non-DEIS
• 44.35 hours a week — Free Education Scheme, DEIS
• 12.44 hours a week — fee-charging school

Department of Education worked example for a 500-student school. No Clare school is fee-charging, so the third figure does not apply anywhere in the county.

Circular 0072/2026 sets how that time is used: one third of a guidance counsellor's allocated time goes on classroom guidance teaching, and two thirds on group work, one-to-one sessions and the other components of the role. A guidance counsellor must be a registered second-level teacher who also holds a recognised guidance qualification.

Clare's two largest schools, St Flannan's College in Ennis with 1,270 students and Coláiste Mhuire in Ennis with 1,013, are both more than twice the size of the Department's 500-student worked example. Its smallest, St Joseph's Community College in Kilkee with 171 students, is around a third of it.

The four decisions a Clare student is actually making

1. Subject choice, in third year

Subject choice narrows CAO options two years before anyone fills in a CAO form. Fifteen of Clare's sixteen schools are mixed and one is a girls' school, so subject availability varies by school rather than by gender across most of the county.

2. The CAO

Clare has no university of its own. For most CAO courses a Clare student is choosing where to move to as well as what to study — University of Limerick and University of Galway are the nearest.

3. PLC courses

Limerick and Clare ETB's College of FET runs PLC provision at Ennis, Ennistymon, Shannon, Shannon Town, Kilrush, Miltown Malbay, Scariff and Tuamgraney, so most of the county is within commuting distance of a PLC campus.

4. Apprenticeships

SOLAS apprenticeship programmes are national. The guidance counsellor's job here is usually to raise the option at all, since apprenticeships sit outside the CAO timetable that dominates sixth year.

Where you can actually study in Clare

The 16 post-primary schools in Clare

Department of Education Post-Primary Online Database, 2025/26, census date 30 September 2025. Total: 9,521 students.

• DEIS schools in Clare: Ennis Community College, Kilrush Community School and St Joseph's Community College, Kilkee. Post-primary DEIS is a single category — the Department does not publish bands at second level, so no band is given here.
• Irish-medium provision: Gaelcholáiste an Chláir operates as an Irish-medium unit within Ennis Community College in Ennis. It shares that school's roll number, so its own enrolment is not published separately. There is no stand-alone Gaelcholáiste in County Clare.

How to get more out of the guidance you do get

The counsellor in your school is the person who knows you, knows your school, and can write about you. What you can do is arrive at the meeting further along than you would otherwise be.

• Book early in fifth year rather than waiting for sixth.
• Arrive with a shortlist rather than a blank page.
• Bring something written.
• Know your own subject and points position before the meeting.

CourseCompass exists for that preparation stage. Course Compass matches you to CAO courses and produces a PDF booklet you can hand over, which turns a 20-minute slot into a decision-making conversation instead of an information-gathering one. PLC Compass and Apprenticeship Compass do the same for Post-Leaving Cert courses and SOLAS apprenticeships.

Sources

• Post-primary schools enrolment figures (Department of Education collection) — gov.ie
• Post-Primary Online Database, individual school data 2025/26 — gov.ie (XLSX)
• CSO StatBank table ED128, Second-Level Schools by county — data.cso.ie
• Circular 0026/2026, staffing arrangements 2026/27 — gov.ie
• Circular 0072/2026, Guidance in Post-Primary Schools 2026 — gov.ie
• National Consultation on Post-Primary Guidance, Summary Report — gov.ie
• Limerick and Clare ETB Schools Division — lcetb.ie