Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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351. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the mental health and counselling positions in secondary education and the annual cost of same; the way in which these are provided; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37733/17]

Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
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My Department promotes a comprehensive and whole of school approach to the promotion of well-being and positive mental health. This approach considers the entire school community, as well as focussing on groups and individual young people with identified need.  This approach spans the curriculum in schools, whole-school ethos, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, student support, pastoral care, guidance counselling and the provision of professional development for teachers. It also involves accessing other supports such as educational psychology services and the interface with other agencies, both nationally and locally. Additionally, schools engage in a wide range of sport and cultural activities which provide an important opportunity for students to experience success and personal growth. The whole staff shares responsibility for general student well-being.

The Well-being in Post Primary Schools Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion and Suicide Prevention (2013) provides a framework for schools to present in an integrated way their existing good practice. The Guidelines promote social and emotional learning, and mental health and direct then to new practices, as appropriate.

More recently, my Department’s Action Plan for Education 2017 promotes well-being as one of its key goals. Other actions, in addition to those outlined above, relating to well-being and mental health in the primary school sector include:

Developing an integrated programme of support for all schools to implement the Well-being Guidelines and an implementation plan for roll-out of this programme to all post-primary schools.

Increasing the capacity of NEPS: an enhanced educational psychological service to schools, through the appointment of an additional 10 educational psychologists. The focus of this additional support will be on extending the delivery of training to teachers in DEIS schools.

From September 2017 all students entering first year will study a new area of learning at Junior Cycle called Well-being. There is a suite of  supports provided to post-primary schools to enable them to implement the Well-being Programme.

Measures announced by my Department as part of Budget 2016 and 2017 mean that 400 guidance posts, or two thirds of the guidance allocation that was withdrawn in Budget 2012, will be restored to schools from September 2017. All of these 400 posts are allocated separately and transparently on the staffing schedule of posts for schools. The pupil teacher ratio (PTR) will revert to 19:1 with effect from September 2017 with the guidance allocation shown separately on the staffing schedules and will represent 0.4 of the PTR for each school. There is now an obligation on schools to ensure that the hours are used for guidance activities. Principals may decide to allocate more hours to guidance activities than the amount allocated on the schedule; they cannot decide to allocate fewer.

While most of the 400 posts restored over the past two years are likely to be allocated to guidance counsellors, schools may decide, in the context of their guidance plans, to allocate some resources to others who may also play a role in delivering guidance in the schools. However, my Department has made it clear that schools’ guidance plans should include specified time allocation for guidance counsellors to be available for one-to-one guidance counselling and time allocation for the role in supporting the organisation and work of the Student Support Team.