Guidance and counselling are a whole-school responsibility, with guidance counsellors playing their part within an overall team approach. The representative organisations for school principals and school management have developed a framework that assists schools on how best to manage the provision of guidance from within their staffing allocation. Wherever possible, group work and class-based activity should be used to maximise the amount of time available for those pupils who are most in need of one-to-one support. In February my Department published a guide to developing student support teams in post-primary schools. This is an important resource for schools in promoting and protecting students' well-being and an aid to establishing a team or reviewing an existing team. Guidance counsellors have two distinct functions. The first is general career guidance and guidance on the educational opportunities a child or young person might pursue, while the second involves support for students' well-being. The principal and leadership of a school have the best knowledge and experience to determine how exactly guidance resources and teaching resources should be allocated. I do not subscribe to the assertion that teachers, as highly trained individuals and responsible adults operating in a school environment, do not have the professional capacity or knowledge to deal with a significant number of the issues that arise in their classrooms on a daily basis.
