College Routes That Do Not Depend on Points Alone

Your daughter comes downstairs with her mock results and the conversation goes quiet. You are already doing the maths in your head — points, courses, the CAO — and none of it is adding up the way you hoped. Before that feeling takes hold, it is worth knowing that the leaving cert points race is one route into further education and training, not the only one. There are several others, and some of them suit certain students better anyway.

PLC Courses and Progression to College

Post-Leaving Certificate courses, called PLCs, are run at further education colleges and community colleges around the country. Your son sits his Leaving Cert, applies through a separate system called FETCH rather than the CAO, and spends a year or two studying something practical and specific — healthcare, childcare, computing, business, art and design, and many more.

The part that surprises a lot of parents is the link back into college. Many higher education institutions reserve a number of places each year for students who have completed a relevant PLC course and earned a distinction or merit grade. These places are filled on the basis of QQI awards — that is the qualification your child gets at the end of the PLC — rather than Leaving Cert points. The entry requirements and the number of reserved places vary considerably between colleges and between courses, so you will need to check what each college publishes on its own admissions pages. What it means in practice is that a student who struggled on a bad exam week can find a different path into the same, or a similar, degree.

A PLC year is also not a year lost. Students often come out of it more focused and more certain about what they actually want to study.

Apprenticeships: Earning While Training

An apprenticeship is a formal training programme where your daughter is employed by a company from the start and earns a wage while she learns. The training splits between on-the-job work and time in an education provider, usually an ETB college or an institute of technology. She comes out at the end with a recognised qualification and, in most cases, real experience with an employer who already knows her work.

Apprenticeships in Ireland now cover a wide range of sectors — construction trades, electrical work, plumbing, but also financial services, auctioneering, healthcare, and insurance, among others. The list has grown considerably in recent years. SOLAS, which is the national body that oversees apprenticeships, publishes the current list of available programmes and explains how entry works for each one. Entry requirements vary by programme; some ask for specific Leaving Cert subjects at a minimum grade rather than a points total.

The honest observation worth making here is that a qualified tradesperson or skilled apprenticeship graduate often earns more at thirty than a college graduate in many other fields. That is not an argument against college. It is just a fact that is sometimes left out of the kitchen-table conversation.

DARE and HEAR: Access Routes Through the CAO

If your son is still going through the CAO, but circumstances have affected his results or his application, there are two schemes worth understanding.

DARE stands for Disability Access Route to Education. It is for students whose disability, mental health condition, or significant ongoing medical condition has had a meaningful impact on their second-level education. Students apply through the CAO and submit supporting documentation from a medical or psychological professional. Colleges that participate in DARE keep a proportion of their places to be filled at a reduced points level for eligible students. The reduction varies by college and by course.

HEAR stands for Higher Education Access Route. It is aimed at school-leavers from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Eligibility depends on a combination of factors — including household income, secondary school type, and area of residence — and all of them are assessed together rather than any single one being decisive. Again, participating colleges reserve places for eligible HEAR applicants, often at a reduced points threshold.

Both schemes require documentation and are applied for through the CAO before the relevant deadline in the spring. The CAO website sets out exactly what is needed for each one, and it is the right place to check current requirements rather than relying on what someone else's family went through two or three years ago, because details do change.

What to Do Next

Sit down with your son or daughter and look at the SOLAS website for apprenticeships and the FETCH website for PLC courses in your area — both give you a clear picture of what is actually available locally. If a disability or disadvantaged background is relevant, go to the CAO website and read through DARE and HEAR before the spring deadline arrives. One focused hour on the right websites will tell you more than a month of WhatsApp group messages.

Where to check the official details

Rates, dates and deadlines change every year. These are the sources worth trusting over anything in a group chat.

• FET Course Hub — Further education and PLC courses near you
• Apprenticeship.ie — Every registered apprenticeship in Ireland
• Access College — The official DARE and HEAR information site