Parents are often highly critical of the service some guidance counsellors are providing. "We are concerned about the lack of quality information available to parents and students," confirms John White, PRO of the National Parents Council PostPrimary (NPC-PP).

"There are not enough guidance counsellors and some of them are not up to date on current information," he says, adding that "quality guidance counselling" should be available in every school and there should be at least one guidance counsellor for every 250 students.

Guidance counsellors will freely admit that there are brilliant practitioners and also poor ones, like any other walk of life. For their part, counsellors can be critical of parents. According to White, many of today's parents have little personal experience of second-level. Being so uninformed, he says, they may be unaware that there are questions they should be asking.

It's not good enough, says Tony Deffely, guidance counsellor at Davitt College, Castlebar, Co Mayo. "Every student needs parental support. Even if they have little or no information, they should try and find out. Parents must have the confidence to get involved."

Invariably the parents who turn up to meetings organised by guidance counsellors are the ones who have the information at their fingertips. The people in most need of information are less likely to participate, counsellors say.

In some instances parents and students express dissatisfaction with guidance counsellors because they fail to tell students what they should be doing. "People want you to make the decisions for them," complains guidance counsellor in the west. "They don't realise that we're here to give guidance, not to tell people what to do."