Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 November 2012
106. Deputy Seamus Healy asked the Minister for Education and Skills in view of the issue of bullying, if he will revert to the situation whereby career guidance teachers are ex-quota in secondary schools; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51561/12]
View answer107. Deputy Charlie McConalogue asked the Minister for Education and Skills the discussions he has had with the Institute of Guidance Counsellors since September 2012 in relation to the impact of the cut to guidance hours which has resulted in schools only being able to provide an emergency counselling service to students; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51421/12]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 106 and 107 together.
Guidance is a whole-school activity and not just a matter for school guidance counsellors alone. Under existing arrangements each school develops a whole-school guidance plan as a means of supporting the needs of its students. I acknowledge that bringing guidance provision within quota is challenging for schools but this must be seen in the context of our very difficult budgetary constraints. The alternative was to adjust the staffing schedule. I explained this to the Institute of Guidance Counsellors when I met its members after the budget.
As part of the budgetary measures, my Department helped shelter the impact for DEIS post-primary schools by improving their standard staffing allocations. My Department has existing arrangements in place for providing short-term support to schools that are dealing with particularly acute incidents that arise due to tragic accidents, bereavements and so on.
On helping to improve how we tackle bullying I expect to receive the action plan in the coming weeks from the working group I established to look at this issue.
I thank the Minister for his reply. We need a structure at school level to deal with issues that arise from the students' point of view, be they bullying or other personal matters. They must be able to interact with the structure and be comfortable with it.
Is the Minister satisfied that what is in place is adequate to do that? Along with many guidance counsellors and teachers, I am not satisfied that the current situation is adequate particularly to deal with the area of bullying, which, unfortunately, is widespread and some would say is almost of epidemic proportions. Will the Minister carry out a review of how the changes made in the budget have impacted on schools and students? When will the report of the working group, which the Minister just mentioned, become available and will he publish that report?
I will deal with the last part of the Deputy's question first. The working party that was established earlier this year hopes to complete its draft report by the end of the month. It will then be circulated to the interested parties for comment and therefore we will have it very early in the new year. That is the timetable to which we are working. It is an interdepartmental working group along with representatives of other bodies, including the Irish Second-Level Students' Union and others.
Will the Minister be publishing that report?
I will certainly publish it. The report will be sent to the various interested parties for comment and any changes, among other things. It will then be finalised and we will publish it as soon as possible after that.
On the other matters the Deputy raised, let me outline what is available for school communities from the National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS. The support of the whole school community, parents and the relevant external agencies such as the National Educational Welfare Board, NEWB, and NEPS is key to the provision of guidance and support to schools in addition to what schools already have. Psychologists from NEPS also provide a range of supports through schools, including the promotion of mental health material among the general student body and assistance in supporting pupils with particular social, emotional or behavioural difficulties. NEPS has provided guidance to all schools and school communities on structures and processes to be put in place in the event of critical incidents.
Upon request by school authorities NEPS psychologists provide direct on-site assistance to schools in coping with the aftermath of such traumatic events. The Department is also aiming to launch the guidelines on mental health for post-primary schools later this year. These guidelines aim to support schools in developing a whole-school approach to mental health promotion and suicide prevention and are of relevance to members of the school community. In particular they have been developed to support principals, guidance counsellors, student support teams and teachers.
When this announcement was made in last year's budget, we warned that it could lead to the end of career guidance as a profession, as well as impacting on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged students, especially those with mental health concerns. At the time the Minister assured us that schools would continue to provide guidance to their students and he was confident that schools would act in the best interests of students when determining precisely how to use the teaching resources available to them. However, the reality has turned out to be somewhat different. As a result of the cuts the Minister has implemented, schools are no longer managing to maintain a sufficient service. According to the president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, Mr. Gerry Flynn, the decision to remove guidance provision has led to a dismantling of a support service in schools that had taken years to establish. In addition, the decision is effectively institutionalising inequality in our schools, where only the students who can afford access to private counselling are in a position to get the help they require in certain instances. What meetings has the Minister had with representatives of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors to discuss the impact the cut is having on services in schools?
I have had a number of meetings, one of which was a recent informal meeting at the exhibition in the RDS on third level options.
I do not accept the assertions in the quotations the Deputy read from the letter to which he referred. Some smaller schools at post-primary level have had difficulties in regard to the matter but the larger schools still have the service of full guidance teachers where their numbers warrant that. The services available from National Educational Psychological Service, NEPS, is an indication of the sad reality that there have been traumatic incidents in some schools, and we have had too many of those. I have been told by schools which have had this dreadful experience that the service available from NEPS is extremely good.
Clearly, there is an emerging role for the provision of pastoral care within the post-primary sector as distinct from career guidance per se. We have to examine the way in which the junior cycle reforms will be implemented, which will address the issues of facilitating children to make sure that they take care of themselves. I am mindful there is a later question on this matter and that the Deputy has tabled a later question to me on this matter. This matter is not only the responsibility of one person or a few people in a school, it must be part and parcel of the culture of the entire school.
I accept the Minister's final point. It is extremely important there would be a whole school approach to this matter and that it would not only be the responsibility of the guidance counsellor. The changes in this area made in the last budget have affected the support and work to prevent the difficulties that have arisen and continue to arise. My understanding from schools in my constituency and further afield is that the changes have been detrimental to the provision of services for students. I again ask the Minister to agree to review the situation and to establish the impact of the changes on schools because that is vital if we are to do anything more for students into the future.
I believe the Minister would recognise that the role of the guidance counsellor is not only to provide career guidance but, as the title indicate, also to be a counsellor to students on many issues.
A guidance counsellor is the first contact and a key person students seek out when they have a particular issue and these would be issues long before NEPS might become involved. We are now two and half months into the new school year and it is clear the impact on students of the measures the Minister introduced last year has been chronic and it is getting more difficult for them all the time. There is a need for the Minister to revisit this issue in the upcoming budget. The changes have created difficulties for students and we have seen particular instances of that. We have also seen tragic incidents recently of the increasing issues with which students have to deal and much of this also falls within the remit of the guidance counsellors. The Minister needs to revisit this in the budget and I ask him to commit to do that here today.
There are two issues here. The first is that we must recognise that this measure was introduced in order to comply with the necessity to reduce expenditure in the overall education budget. I had two choices: I could have disimproved the pupil-teacher ratio in second level schools to achieve the target or I could have referred back to the principals, who have a major leadership role in our post-primary schools as well as in our primary schools, to give them the power to use and deploy the guidance teacher within the school. Virtually all guidance counsellors have a teaching qualification and an expertise in a number of subjects as well as the specialty for which they subsequently studied. Power in this respect was devolved to the principals to deploy as they saw best fit. I think that was a better option than the other one, which would have been to disimprove the pupil-teacher ratio which probably would have resulted in some schools losing subject choice.
The second point is that guidance and counselling responsibility and pastoral care, if one wants to use it in that sense, has to be the responsibility of the entire school community, as Deputy Healy has recognised. In that regard, where a serious incident occurs back-up resources through NEPS, as I have described, are available to the school in question.
The last point I make to Deputy McConalogue is that the first point of contact in this respect in my experience, speaking as someone who has some knowledge of education, is the key teacher in the classroom, the teacher who knows better than perhaps other teachers a particular student. We have all known those teachers. If a young student starts to go off form, so to speak, it is quite possible the first point of contact would be that the classroom subject teacher would ask the student what is wrong, if there is a difficulty or something the student wants to talk about, and then refer the student.
Guidance counsellors will not see the deterioration in behaviour of a young person in a classroom because they do not have that contact, but the English, Irish or geography teacher will be the first point of contact and the relationship between the subject teachers and the school's pastoral care service is as critical as the engagement of the guidance counsellor by the student. A student may not want to go to a guidance counsellor. It is more complex than the way it is presented by certain people.
