Guidance resources for Irish schools

Irish career guidance platform CourseCompass has released three free resources for the 2026/27 guidance year, built around the decisions guidance counsellors handle most often.

The company's stated aim is to become the best guidance provider in Ireland for schools — by supporting guidance counsellors, not competing with them. A school's guidance allocation is fixed and its demand is not, so every tool is built to take procedural load off that allocation and leave counsellor hours for the one-to-one work only a counsellor can do.

Alternative entry routes into CAO courses. The Backdoor Routes database maps entry that does not depend on Round 1 points — 2,499 routes into 1,009 CAO courses, and 216 PLC courses mapped to the degrees they open. Every route carries source documentation and a verification date. Coverage includes the QQI/FET links scheme, tertiary degrees, mature entry, HEAR and DARE, access and foundation courses, ladder progression, advanced entry and transfer, and Springboard+.

CAO points 2026 v 2025. A comparison across 1,395 courses. On Round 1, 627 rose, 451 fell and 90 were unchanged, averaging +5.9 points. Of the 316 courses that went to Round 2, 184 fell — an average drop of 16.7 points.

Points rose despite lower Leaving Certificate grades. CAO had received 88,817 applications by the 1 February deadline, up 6.5% on 2025, which was itself up 8.5% (RTÉ, 10 March 2026).

Student accommodation guides cover the eight largest universities, the technological universities campus by campus, and specialist institutions including RCSI, NCAD, IADT and Marino — cost, deadline, and whether allocation is by lottery or first come.

The schools dashboard puts a year group in one place. A counsellor can allocate psychometric assessments to named students, see results in real time, and pick up students who have flagged their own results for review and asked for a meeting. It also carries career investigations, a CV builder, a mock CAO exercise, worksheets, and SUSI, HEAR and DARE eligibility guides. This is all apart of the CourseCompass School Package, visit coursecompass.ie/schools for more information!