How to Hire a Facilitator or Tutor for a Learning Pod in Ireland

Finding the right person to run your learning pod is the decision that makes or breaks the whole arrangement. Get it right and parents stop burning out, children thrive, and the cooperative hums along. Get it wrong and you either dissolve the pod within a term, or — worse — find yourself in breach of employment law while thinking you hired an independent contractor.

This guide covers what to look for, what to pay, and the one credential question that trips up most Irish pod founders.

What "facilitator" actually means in the Irish context

There is no legal definition of a micro-school facilitator under Irish law. The person you hire is simply a private tutor or educator engaged by a cooperative of home-educating families. That cooperative does not constitute a school. Each family in the pod retains primary legal responsibility for their child's education under Article 42 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, and each must maintain their own Tusla AEARS registration under Section 14 of the Education (Welfare) Act 2000.

The facilitator's job is to deliver the daily instruction. The parents remain the responsible educators in the eyes of the State. That distinction matters both legally and practically: if a Tusla assessor visits, the parent answers for the educational programme — not the tutor.

Teaching Council registration: required or not?

Here is where confusion is rampant in Irish home education forums. The Teaching Council of Ireland registration is not legally required for a tutor hired by a home-educating family or learning pod. The Council's mandatory registration requirements apply to teachers employed in recognised schools — national schools, secondary schools, and community schools in receipt of state funding.

However, there are two strong practical reasons to prefer a Teaching Council-registered tutor:

1. Garda vetting is resolved. All registered teachers must be vetted by the National Vetting Bureau as a condition of Council registration. You can request sight of their current vetting disclosure statement. For an unregistered tutor, arranging Garda vetting is a separate, non-trivial process (see below).

2. Tusla assessors respond better to it. While assessors cannot require you to use a qualified teacher, presenting a facilitator with a primary or post-primary Teaching Council registration removes one potential line of questioning from your assessment review.

If you hire someone without Teaching Council registration — a subject expert, a Montessori-trained educator, a university postgraduate — their credentials may be excellent, but you need to arrange Garda vetting through an affiliate organisation such as Volunteer Ireland or a County Volunteer Centre. Those organisations act as registered bodies under the National Vetting Bureau Acts and can process vetting for small, non-profit cooperatives. This takes time. Factor it in before your start date.

What to pay a tutor or facilitator

Private tutor rates in Ireland currently range between €23 and €41.69 per hour depending on experience, subject specialism, and whether the person holds Teaching Council registration.

For context, the Department of Education's Home Tuition Grant Scheme — which operates separately for children who cannot attend school for medical or SEN reasons — pays qualified primary teachers €50.69 per hour and post-primary teachers €55.92 per hour as of February 2026. These are the rates the State itself considers fair for qualified educators working in non-school settings. If you are hiring a fully qualified, experienced teacher for a full-time facilitation role, expect to pay somewhere between the private market ceiling (€41.69/hr) and the Home Tuition benchmark — not below the private market floor.

When building your pod budget, calculate the facilitator cost in full gross terms. If the person qualifies as an employee under Revenue rules — which is more likely than most pod founders assume — you must add Employers' PRSI on top of gross salary. At 11.05% for most workers, that is a meaningful addition to your cost-sharing model.

A rough framework for a five-family pod running four days per week, 35 weeks per year:

• 4 hours/day × 4 days/week × 35 weeks = 560 facilitated hours annually
• At €30/hour gross = €16,800 annual cost
• With Employers' PRSI at 11.05% = approximately €18,655 total
• Split across five families = approximately €3,731 per family per year

That is before venue, materials, and insurance. Budget realistically from the start to avoid the most common cause of pod collapse: financial surprise midway through the year.

What to ask at interview

Beyond qualifications and rates, the facilitator interview should probe:

Pedagogical approach. Are they comfortable with mixed-age groups? Home-educated cohorts rarely fall into neat year-group brackets. Ask for a concrete example of how they would approach a session with children spanning three to four years in ability.

AEARS familiarity. Not every tutor understands that their teaching must support multiple individual Tusla assessments, not a single school inspection. The parents will need documented evidence of their child's progress in literacy, numeracy, and broader development. The facilitator's lesson planning and record-keeping need to generate that evidence.

Availability and substitution. This matters more than it sounds. Under the Karshan judgment (see our related post on PAYE obligations), the ability of a worker to freely substitute a replacement is one factor courts and Revenue use to assess employment status. If your facilitator cannot substitute and you control their schedule fully, Revenue may classify them as an employee regardless of what your contract says. Know this upfront.

References. Ask for two references from previous teaching or tutoring engagements, preferably in small-group settings. Home education and micro-school facilitation are different from classroom teaching, and someone who flourishes in one does not always thrive in the other.

The written agreement

Every hiring arrangement, whether employment or contractor, requires a written contract. For an employment contract, your solicitor should draft it under the Terms of Employment (Information) Acts 1994–2014. For a genuine independent contractor arrangement (and the distinction is not yours alone to decide — Revenue makes the final call), the contract should specify that the tutor sets their own methods, can substitute, and is not under the exclusive direction of the pod families.

Template contractor agreements downloaded from US or UK sites are not appropriate for Irish law. They reference employment legislation that does not apply here and will not reflect your obligations under Irish employment and tax law.

For a complete operational framework — including a co-operative agreement template, budget spreadsheet in euros, and a Tusla-aligned curriculum planning guide — the Ireland Micro-School & Pod Kit covers the full setup process in one place.

Summary

Hiring a facilitator for your Irish learning pod is not complicated if you work through the steps in order:

1. Decide whether you need Teaching Council registration (preferred) or whether you will arrange vetting via an umbrella organisation.
2. Set a realistic hourly rate based on the €23–€41.69 private market range and the Home Tuition benchmark.
3. Build your budget including Employers' PRSI if employment status applies.
4. Use a written contract that accurately reflects the legal relationship Revenue would assign.
5. Interview specifically for AEARS familiarity and mixed-age group experience.

None of this is beyond a motivated group of parents. It just requires doing it in the right order before the first day of term rather than after.

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