Challenges in school counselling practices as observed in a review (Part 1.6):

 - My interest in this study is also through my personal experiences. When I was undertaking my one year course in counselling I studied student counselling and child counselling, there I got interested in child counselling. And I believe that there is a lot of scope for child counselling arena in rural and semi-urban schools also. In this study, I studied a variety of school types, which gave me exposure to various student wellbeing facilities and programs at school.

Student mental health is an emerging issue globally. The CTF (Canadian Teachers’ Federation) has conducted a national teacher survey on the Teacher Voice in 2011. Various questions were asked to teachers. One question was about the most significant challenge influencing students’ ability to succeed in school, one teacher respondent noted:

   ‘I am seeing mental health issues more frequently impacting student performance’.

When asked what changes they would make to the public education system for the benefit of student learning, this respondent noted:

   ‘Availability of mental health professionals who specialize in work with children and are attached to schools’.

Counselling could happen in two ways- Formal counselling and counselling skills.

‘Formal counselling is undertaken by a professional counsellor acting in his or her specialist role and in accordance with a recognised code of ethics that requires confidentiality, accountability, and supervision and continuing professional development’ (BACP, 2007).

‘Counselling skills are used by many people who work with children and young people in a specific role such as teachers, school nurses, youth workers and social workers.  These skills include listening in a non-judgemental way, being empathic and helping people to feel valued and understood. The role and responsibilities of the individual professional will determine the boundaries of their working practice’ (BACP, 2007).

The second type of counselling approach illustrates that it is not necessary that only psychologists have to be counsellors. The teacher, social worker, school support staff, all can counsel the children for all-round development. And for these people to respond better in terms of counselling ethics, minimum training is advised.

State of counselling facility and expectation at schools:

There are many pieces of research which have studied the school counselling practices. There is a related study done in national and international schools in Karnataka by S. Venkatesan, and H.R. Shyam, of All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore (Venkatesan & Shyam, 2015).

This study reveals some of the major points related to the state of counselling facility and expectation at schools. The study says that, 

the ‘counsellors want to focus on student problems and issues, 

while parents and teachers want them to undertake academic advising, student discipline, conflict resolution, crises intervention, career choice and guidance.

The school administration expects them to liaise, handle admissions and conduct staff enrichment programs’ (Venkatesan & Shyam, 2015). It is worrying to see that nowhere the expectation of student wellbeing is seen from pure humanistic approach, which we were intending to understand through our study.

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This is part of Children's mental health and wellbeing series brought to you by Credence  Learning Foundation. This article is taken from a study submitted as course work at Azim Premji University.

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