Guidance counsellors in the public school system say they are overburdened by a heavy workload and have appealed to the education ministry for help.

According to Kaydian Facey, immediate past president of the Jamaica Association of Guidance Counsellors in Education (JAGCE), there is at least one school that she knows of with a “significantly high” ratio of more than 1,000 students to one guidance counsellor.

“For other schools, you have, like, 600 students to one guidance counsellor. In most schools you have like two guidance counsellors, and even with two guidance counsellors, because there are different components to the guidance programme, it causes you to be doing a lot of stuff, and if you’re not mindful you will become burnt out… The workload is extremely hard,” Facey told the
Jamaica Observer on Sunday, following a service at which she handed over the presidency to Denise Reid at Rehoboth Apostolic Church in Portmore, St Catherine.

The appeal comes two months after the Government revealed that it had increased the number of guidance counsellors in public schools to 1,200, up from the previous 1,098.

Additionally, Education and Youth Minister Fayval Williams had disclosed in March last year that there was one guidance counsellor for every 500 students in the public school system.

However, Facey, pointing to the skewed guidance counsellor-to-student ratio, said her colleagues are fuelled by passion, rather than monetary reward, and therefore continue to press on.

“The role of a guidance counsellor is not an easy one, and if you are a guidance counsellor, you have to first love what you do because it’s a job that really doesn’t reward you monetarily, but you have to have a passion,” said Facey, who is assigned to Kingston Technical High School.

New president Reid appealed for at least two guidance counsellors per school, and said because of the heavy case load, tasks often cannot be completed in order to give the required feedback.

“The things that you do as a counsellor, especially for my school, I have only myself as the counsellor there. When it’s time for me to do something else and there is a challenge with another student, I have to leave what I am doing to attend to [that student]… Because when the guidance counsellor is doing something, something else might pop up and you have to deal with the situation,” she said.

Reid, who is the guidance counsellor at Mavis Bank High School, said that because the case load is so heavy and counsellors are burnt out, one of her mandates as president is to ensure the well-being of counsellors and that education and training are provided for them.

She said, too, that one of her major concerns is schools, especially in rural areas, without counsellors.

Meanwhile, Facey argued that one of the main challenges making their job even more difficult is lack of parental involvement in the lives of students.

“Poor parental involvement is just one of the many issues that we are having, but it is a significant one because it takes a village to raise a child and, these days, most parents leave the school to raise their child. So, at school we might fix a particular issue or we might be working with a child because of a particular issue, but then when they go back in the environment that enforces or reinforces that behaviour, then it basically makes our work hard as guidance counsellors. These are some of the things that cause us to feel like we are just doing too much,” Facey said.

Reid concurred and called for the Ministry of Education to sanction parents who have no involvement in their children’s lives and who leave it solely up to schools to deal with behavioural issues.