‘Prioritise disadvantaged students for guidance service’

Schools with higher numbers of disadvantaged students should be prioritised if guidance counselling provision is restored, says the Royal Irish Academy.

Since 2012, schools have had to provide guidance counselling from within their overall teacher allocations, unlike previous arrangements giving those with more than 500 students a full-time counsellor.

However, this set-up has led to reductions in the availability of staff to offer one-to-one counselling or career guidance, with the Institute of Guidance Counsellors (IGC) reporting that one in five members in schools now spending their entire week teaching curricular subjects.