Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There are two issues here. The first is that we must recognise that this measure was introduced in order to comply with the necessity to reduce expenditure in the overall education budget. I had two choices: I could have disimproved the pupil-teacher ratio in second level schools to achieve the target or I could have referred back to the principals, who have a major leadership role in our post-primary schools as well as in our primary schools, to give them the power to use and deploy the guidance teacher within the school. Virtually all guidance counsellors have a teaching qualification and an expertise in a number of subjects as well as the specialty for which they subsequently studied. Power in this respect was devolved to the principals to deploy as they saw best fit. I think that was a better option than the other one, which would have been to disimprove the pupil-teacher ratio which probably would have resulted in some schools losing subject choice.

The second point is that guidance and counselling responsibility and pastoral care, if one wants to use it in that sense, has to be the responsibility of the entire school community, as Deputy Healy has recognised. In that regard, where a serious incident occurs back-up resources through NEPS, as I have described, are available to the school in question.

The last point I make to Deputy McConalogue is that the first point of contact in this respect in my experience, speaking as someone who has some knowledge of education, is the key teacher in the classroom, the teacher who knows better than perhaps other teachers a particular student. We have all known those teachers. If a young student starts to go off form, so to speak, it is quite possible the first point of contact would be that the classroom subject teacher would ask the student what is wrong, if there is a difficulty or something the student wants to talk about, and then refer the student.

Guidance counsellors will not see the deterioration in behaviour of a young person in a classroom because they do not have that contact, but the English, Irish or geography teacher will be the first point of contact and the relationship between the subject teachers and the school's pastoral care service is as critical as the engagement of the guidance counsellor by the student. A student may not want to go to a guidance counsellor. It is more complex than the way it is presented by certain people.

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