From Leaving CertiFiCate to Leaving SChooL a Longitudinal Study ...

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From Leaving Certificate to Leaving School
Similarly in Fig Lane, students felt the guidance counsellor did not have
enough time for these meetings:
The meetings were good.
It was so hard to get a meeting with him though.
You have a time but then he just doesn’t come or he has someone in.
Or he’s on the phone.
So you are just standing outside his room for about half an hour
waiting. (Fig Lane, coed school, middle-class intake)
Students in Harris Street felt that more guidance counsellors were needed
in the school in order to facilitate individual sessions:
I think they should know each and every single person in sixth year
and their lives, I really do, like there should be at least five of them
or something. (Harris Street, girls’ school, middle-class intake)
Previous research has shown that guidance counsellors have difficulties
balancing a teaching role and a pastoral role which involves promoting a
‘caring, supportive, non-disciplinarian image’ for students (see McCoy et
al., 2004, p. 192). In some schools, this dual role appeared to affect the
level of trust, confidentiality and respect between students and their
guidance counsellor, given the blurred boundaries between ‘teacher’ and
‘counsellor’:
I think if there’s a guidance counsellor at the school they shouldn’t
be, they shouldn’t be teaching you the subject, they should be just
solely advising you. So you can go to them but if [you] have them
for a subject you are not going to go to them, I don’t feel I could
trust them. (Barrack Street, girls’ school, working-class intake)
Staff in Dawson Street also raised the issue around combining teacher
and guidance counselling among LCA students in particular. It was felt
that teaching them a subject and being their guidance counsellor did not
work: