It’s not punitive truancy measures or mandated teaching methods, but ring-fenced funding for school-based counsellors, according to the NZ Association of Counsellors (NZAC).
New research from the Education Review Office has found that primary school students are facing more mental health challenges, but schools based counselling can make a real difference.
Counselling in Schools - Awhi Mai, Awhi Atu, is an initiative which began in 2021 with the aim of providing evidence-based counselling support.
Reporting on the initiative after three years of operation, ERO found eight in 10 students report improvements to their mental health after receiving counselling.
Teachers reported more than half of the students who attended counselling improved in their learning progress, and parents and students agreed.
More than three-quarters of teachers, students and parents also reported that counselling in primary schools improved attendance.
And teachers said counselling improves overall classroom behaviour, with three-quarters reporting improvements in wider classroom behaviour due to counselling.
Sarah Maindonald, president of NZAC says these findings are not surprising.
“This is a message that we’ve been trying to give for over a decade,” she tells EducationHQ.
Maindonald has worked as a counsellor in schools for more than 30 years.
She’s seen an increase in mental health challenges for primary school students in recent years, with COVID causing a significant rise in anxiety issues for children and whanau.
“Kids being isolated for extended periods of time, really, this wasn’t good for mental health,” she says.
“Having to do all their education online, being deprived of mentorship and social connection, I think all of those have impacted on mental health across the whole population.”
Despite the increased need, she says governments are yet to properly fund mental health services in schools.
Students in Christchurch have been waitlisted for up to 400 days, for a mental health assessment.
“The Government actually needs to invest in children’s mental health,” Maindonald says.
“At the moment, there’s no provision for counselling in primary and intermediate schools per se.
“In secondary schools there is some provision, but it’s not really adequate.
“Sometimes it’s up to the actual school board, but it really needs to be universal, so that any child, no matter what part of the country or what school they go to, can access counselling support.”
The ERO report also found that the greatest improvements are for students who experience the most severe mental distress.
Two-thirds of students with the highest mental health needs saw improvement in their learning progress.
And these improvements last after counselling finishes.
Four in five teachers told us that these improvements for mental health are still evident after six months.
Maindonald would like to see a qualified school counsellor funded for every primary and intermediate school, and at least one counsellor to every 400 high school students.
“This is actually good economic sense,” she says
“If you arrest problems in children’s learning and engagement and mental distress, it actually is better for their long-term trajectory.
“It can keep them off that pathway to dependency and incarceration.”
“Now is the time to invest in our children’s futures; if the Government committed to the long-term funding of qualified counsellors on school grounds, this programme and its results would be the envy of the world.”
