A course-match test built around how Clare actually works

Further Education

Further education is not the fallback option here

Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board runs its Further Education and Training division as a genuinely large operation — over 35,000 learners a year across 28 multi-campus College of FET locations and more than 300 participating community locations in Limerick and Clare combined. Source: LCETB

Within Clare specifically, that network runs through seven named campuses, each with its own specialism rather than a single generic FET building:

• Ennis Campus
• Shannon Campus (x2)
• Kilrush Campus
• Miltown Malbay Campus
• Scariff Campus
• Tuamgraney Campus
• Ennistymon Campus

Locally, further education providers report growing interest in PLCs and apprenticeships as an alternative or a companion to the traditional CAO route, particularly as school leavers weigh college costs against other paths into work. Source: Clare FM That's exactly the kind of choice the CAO Course Match Test is built to help with — it weighs FET and apprenticeship routes alongside degree courses, rather than treating them as a lesser option.

Aviation

The Shannon aviation pathway

Shannon has more than fifty years of established aviation vocational training behind it, and it's currently being expanded rather than wound down. In December 2022, LCETB announced a new College of Further Education and Training campus in Shannon built around a National Centre of Excellence for Aviation, part of a five-year investment programme exceeding €1 billion funded by the Department of Education, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, and SOLAS. It's set to expand existing aircraft engine apprenticeships and introduce new helicopter engine apprenticeships. Source: Clare Champion

The best-known route into that world is Atlantic Aviation Group's Aircraft Maintenance Engineering apprenticeship, run out of Shannon Airport. Here's roughly how it works:

1. Leaving Cert entry requirements

   Applicants must be 17 or over, with a minimum of H5/O4 in Leaving Cert Maths and English.

2. Four-year apprenticeship, five phases

   Training alternates on- and off-the-job — roughly 102 weeks off-the-job plus over two years on-the-job — delivered with SOLAS Training Centre Shannon and DIT Bolton Street.

3. National Craft Certificate

   Graduates earn a QQI National Craft Certificate on completion of the apprenticeship.

4. Aircraft Maintenance Engineer's Licence

   The qualification also progresses toward an Irish Aviation Authority licence under EASA Part 66, Module B1.

5. A career at scale

   Atlantic Aviation Group has trained over 4,500 engineers and technicians to date and employs more than 800 staff at Shannon.

Apprenticeship details: Atlantic Aviation Group

Marine

Kilrush and the turn to the sea

Beyond the classroom

Course-matching isn't only about STEM and business

A course-match report is only as good as the range of routes it considers, and Clare has real, funded infrastructure outside the classroom too. The Burren Outdoor Education & Training Centre, based in Turlough near Bell Harbour and run under LCETB since the early 1980s, delivers caving, rock climbing, kayaking, hill walking and field studies in geography and ecology to secondary schools, primary schools, scout groups and adult learners — the kind of hands-on, outdoor-leadership experience that points toward careers in outdoor education, environmental science or tourism. Source: Burren OEC

On the arts side, Music Generation Clare — based at the Creative Hub on LCETB's Ennis Campus — delivers subsidised performance music education across more than 40 centres countywide, and has created over 1,000 opportunities for children and young people to engage with music tuition, funded locally by LCETB with support from Clare County Council as part of the national Music Generation programme. Source: Music Generation Clare For a student whose aptitude profile points toward the arts, that's a genuinely local, funded route worth knowing about before CAO forms go in.

The bigger picture

Clare's economy, in numbers

Course choices don't happen in a vacuum — they happen against the backdrop of where the jobs actually are. Census 2022 and the most recent Shannon Airport Group figures give a reasonably current picture of County Clare:

Manufacturing led employment in the county with over 8,600 workers, ahead of Human Health and Social Work Activities (5,900+) and Wholesale/Retail Trade (5,600+). Unemployment fell to 8% in 2022, down from 12% in 2016. Source: CSO Census 2022

Shannon Airport itself had its strongest year since 2009 in 2024, carrying over 2.1 million passengers — a 7% increase on 2023 — while the Shannon Airport Group's own Business Park, next to the airport, is home to more than 300 companies employing over 10,000 people. Source: Clare Champion

On education specifically, 44% of Clare's population held a third-level qualification in 2022 (against 45% nationally), including 763 PhD holders — 2% of all PhD holders in the country. The average age at which Clare residents finished full-time education rose from 20 to 20.9 between 2016 and 2022. Source: CSO Census 2022