Short supply causes concern in schools

The short supply of guidance counsellors is a major problem, says George O'Callaghan, general secretary of the Secretariat of Secondary Schools. "Most schools find it difficult to recruit new guidance counsellors," he says. "There are very few qualified guidance counsellors around."

The shortage of places on post-graduate guidance counselling courses means that relatively few guidance counsellors are being produced each year. The diploma courses at UCD and UCC are always oversubscribed and people are often being trained for a particular school, he says. For example, UCD offers 22 places and UL's recently launched graduate diploma offers just 20 places. NUI Maynooth also offers a guidance counselling course.

Critics say that one-year courses are too short - it's impossible to cover guidance and counselling in sufficient depth in so short a time. As a result, when they go out into schools many new guidance counsellors find themselves ill-equipped.

Keeping abreast in this area is difficult even for long established guidance counsellors who say that they have to spend long hours keeping up to date with new information. They point out that outdated information could ruin a student's life chances.

The Institute of Guidance Counsellors boasts just over 700 members - the vast majority work in second-level schools but, of course, not necessarily at guidance counselling. The Institute offers in-service training supported by the Department of Education, but only about half of guidance counsellors avail of this training.