Minister Pat Breen presents award and €7,000 funding for Rathú

Featured in January 2018 Teaching & Learning Newsletter

Clare’s best young entrepreneurs have been honoured at the County Final of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE) competition, which took place in the Buttermarket Building in Ennis on Thursday, 14 December 2017. IBYE, which has a €2 million investment fund, is run by all 31 Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs) and is supported by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation.

Rathú founder, Ciara McGuane, was announced as the Clare County Winner 2018 for ‘Best Business Idea’. Pat Breen TD, Minister for Trade, Employment, Business, EU Digital Single Market & Data Protection, and Cllr. Tom McNamara, Mayor of Clare were on hand to present the award to her.

Ciara lived in London for nine years and relocated to Ireland in July 2016. She set up her new business in September 2017. Her UK-based experience has been extremely beneficial to her. She has acquired €7,000 funding for the next stage of her plans for Rathú and moves onto the regional finals in January 2018 where she will compete with other category winners for a place at the national finals at Google European Head Office in Dublin.

A graduate of NUIG, UL and UCL, Ciara McGuane is an education consultant with Rathú and TES Institute. She runs teaching & learning and wellbeing workshops to support teachers and schools. Ciara is an experienced coach, mentor and CPD facilitator in an educational setting and has delivered CPD at the Institute of Education, London among other settings. Her in-school leadership experience consists of whole-school CPD provision, strategic planning, facilitation, curriculum design and teaching & learning. Ciara firmly believes in a reflective practice approach that promotes the idea of growth mindset and learning for life.

Rathú, is an education consultancy to support the training needs of schools across Ireland, which launched in September 2017. Consultants at Rathú believe that Schools should bring out the best in teachers and young people and aim to offer world-class training to help make that happen. By providing high-quality professional development and making a positive impact on one teacher, Rathú aims to improve the educational outcomes for at least 30 students at primary-level and up to 300 students at post-primary level.

“Feedback has been extremely positive from school leaders and teachers about what we are doing. Schools are really coming on board with it and we have had many queries about how we can support school leaders and teachers – this can be with one to one support with classroom practice; teaching & learning workshops and consultancy with school leaders. Many school leaders have expressed gratitude that we are offering this support as we provide them with a bespoke service. There is no other organisation doing this. I am delighted that the value of teacher training is being recognised. The award and the funding are a huge bonus and will help me to scale up what Rathú is offering to support and develop more teachers”.  

Ciara McGuane, Senior Education Consultant & Founder