Kerry schools hit by guidance service cuts

Students returning to Kerry’s 27 post-primary schools in September are facing huge guidance service cuts — in some cases up to 80%.

A survey by the Kerry branch of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors has found reductions in guidance will range from 10% to 80%, with the majority of schools facing a drop of 40% to 50%.

Government cutbacks, which bring guidance counselling hours within the overall staff allocation, are forcing school principals and boards of management into making impossible choices when the programmes and timetables are being prepared for the new school year, the branch said.

Branch spokesperson Niamh Dwyer said it means guidance counsellors will be time-tabled for considerably less hours in their speciality and will be allocated more hours in other subjects.

She said there would be a “complete erosion” of the one-to-one contact that students from first year to sixth year had with their guidance counsellors up to now.

Ms Dwyer, a guidance counsellor in Scoil Phobail Sliabh Luachra, Rathmore, said that contact was a critical part of the experience of second-level students as they made important decisions and coped with the broad range of personal difficulties.

The Kerry branch found that in the case of 40% of the 18 schools surveyed, guidance counsellors have not been given specific hours for guidance services.

All they have been told is that there will be a reduction in the hours allocated to guidance.

“This uncertainty is wholly unacceptable at this stage in the year, as guidance counsellors attempt to plan how to deliver their guidance programme to students with greatly reduced resources,” Ms Dwyer said.

She said the findings also showed that in 60% of the remaining Kerry schools surveyed, there is widespread inequality, even among schools in the same areas.

Reductions are also reported in eight Kerry DEIS schools (delivering equality of opportunity in schools.)

The pupil-teacher ratio has been decreased in the DEIS schools. Therefore, there should be no reduction in the guidance allocation, said Ms Dwyer, adding the most vulnerable students would be affected.

Kerry branch chairperson Brendan Lynch urged parents to ask their local public representatives why the Government was not investing in appropriate guidance for their children.

“They also need to establish exactly what access their sons and daughters will have to their guidance counsellor from next September,” he said.