THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Amid rising cases of suicide, drug abuse, and mental health issues among students, lack of proper counselling facilities in schools is becoming a major concern in the state. It is learned that student counsellors are available only at 1,012 government schools across the state. And all these schools have only a counsellor each.
The state has 12,644 schools, of which government schools number 4,504. There are also 7,277 aided and 863 unaided schools.
More recently, the state has witnessed a surge in incidents of violence, bullying, suicides, and drug abuse among children, re-emphasising the urgent need to enhance the school counselling programme.
The psychosocial service for students in the state was launched by the women and child development (WCD) department back in 2008 as part of ‘Kishori Shakti Yojana’ of the central government. When the Centre discontinued the project, the state decided to take over and extend the initiative. Despite successes, the government has failed to expand it to all aided and government schools in the state.
According to official sources, the state government is hesitant to expand the programme to more schools owing to financial implications involved.
Psychiatrist C J John said the government should roll out the counselling programme to every school in the state. “It has become an urgent need. But before that the government should assess the effectiveness of the present programme. There is a protocol for scientific counselling and we need to look into whether schools are providing adequate infrastructure and facilities for student counsellors. Now, these counsellors are being used for other work,” said John.
He said that more resources should be deployed based on the ratio of students in schools. “Upskilling of counsellors is very important as the nature of the issues faced by students has changed,” he added.
Adding to the woes, student counsellors have been complaining of poor salaries and overwhelming workload. Many say that they are unable to deliver the services to students because of other responsibilities dumped on them by the department. Besides psychosocial services at schools, the counsellors are assigned duties at parental clinics, adolescent clubs and for supporting Pocso victims.
According to counsellors, lack of support from schools is another issue affecting the psychosocial rehabilitation of students. “If we don’t have the support of teachers and principals its tough to do our job. Schools prefer to get rid of troubled students, which is a bad approach,” said Dhanya Abida, state general secretary, Organisation of Social Workers and Counsellors (OSWC).
She said that counsellors are managing thousands of students and are unable to offer their service effectively owing to other responsibilities assigned to them by schools and the WCD department. Sources said the department is planning to expand the initiative to another 1,012 schools this year. However, the government is yet to finalise it owing to financial constraints.