The teachers' union is calling on the government to recruit school counsellors from abroad to ensure there are enough professionals to cope with the demand from students.
The Malta Union of Teachers is insisting school counsellors are over-burdened and has directed them not to take on more students than they can handle. Counsellors in state schools were instructed to refrain from offering their services from last Monday if the student to counsellor ratio was higher than 1,400:1.
An Education Ministry spokes-man produced statistics to show the ratio was in reality lower: The Directorate for Educational Services recently employed 10 trainee counsellors, 10 trainee career advisers, 10 trainee educational psychologists and three psycho-terapists.
"They joined 14 school counsellors and 106 guidance teachers totalling 153 professionals in this field. A total of 15,000 students are being offered guidance services by 14 school counsellors that have been increased to 24 with the three 10 recruits. This means each counsellor is responsible for approximately 625 students," the spokesman said, adding that not all students required counselling or guidance services.
Reacting to this, union president John Bencini pointed out that, as the terminology suggested, a trainee counsellor was not licensed to counsel students.
"It is very positive there are these trainees. However, the truth is that their presence is an added burden to qualified counsellors who have to act as mentors to the trainees apart from cope with their workload. I repeat, this is not a bad thing. But the government adding the trainees as part of the counsellors is like saying cabin crew can fly a plane without a pilot," he said.
He added that the first trainee counsellors would only graduate in three years' time. Until then, schools had to be manned by more counsellors.
For this reason the government should recruit professionals from abroad and focus on attracting more people to the counselling course at university.
The union issued the directive in an effort to pressure the government to recruit more counsellors, saying their workload increased drastically after the new college system was introduced in state schools.
The US and the EU had an average student to counsellor ratio ranging between 1,250 to 1 and 400 to 1, the union said.
Mr Bencini also pointed out that guidance teachers did not offer counselling. And although educational psychologists and psychother-apists did offer some form of counselling, their role was different to that of counsellors.
Being a counsellor, he added, was a very demanding job as one got to deal with personal problems faced by students that could range from drug use to physical abuse. Counsellors often worked closely with Appoġġ agency, the child's family and even the police.
However, he said, the reality was that six of the 10 colleges had one counsellor and they could not cope alone if they were to deliver a good service to students and their parents.