Alison's TY Certified and LCA Certified programmes are giving Irish second-level students structured, CPD-accredited online learning to prepare them for further education, apprenticeships and employment. The programmes address a gap identified in NAPD's Leader magazine, where students can finish school with strong results but little clarity on the careers and skills employers actually value.

The initiative, profiled in Leader, gives Transition Year and Leaving Certificate Applied students access to more than 700 curriculum-aligned learning pathways spanning business, technology, healthcare, sustainability and entrepreneurship, alongside core certifications in workplace health and safety, manual handling and GDPR awareness.

Alison, headquartered in Galway, is a free online learning platform founded in 2007 that now supports more than 50 million learners across 193 countries and offers more than 6,000 free courses. NAPD, the professional association for second-level school leaders in Ireland, is based in Dublin and publishes Leader, the quarterly magazine in which the programmes were profiled.

The structural driver behind the programmes is the mismatch between academic achievement and career readiness, with schools using the flexibility built into Transition Year and Leaving Certificate Applied to let students test career pathways and build a recognised portfolio before they leave the formal curriculum behind.

The approach is already running at Coláiste Bhaile Chláir in Co. Galway, where the school combines assigned Alison courses with self-directed learning for TY and LCA students, including bespoke pathways for exceptionally able learners. A separate partnership with Irish Credit Unions gives participating schools four free financial literacy courses covering budgeting, saving, investing and fraud awareness, developed specifically for the Irish financial system.

In 2026, Rethink Ireland will extend the offering further, launching its Building a Social Enterprise course through Alison's platform for Senior Cycle students, aimed at introducing young people to social entrepreneurship and community-focused business models.

For the sector, the TY and LCA programmes confirm that Irish second-level schools are treating accredited online learning as core infrastructure for career guidance, rather than a supplementary resource layered on top of the existing curriculum.

Source: alison.com