From Ex-Quota to In-Quota: An Analysis of Guidance Counsellorss Perceptions of the Impact of 2012 Budgetary Cutbacks on Their Care Work Across Different School Types.

Abstract

Baker’s equality discourse (2004, 2009) and Lynch’s affective care dialogue (2002, 2007, 2009) informed this study on the impact of budgetary cutbacks on guidance in Irish schools, which found that uneven guidance reductions, primarily between fee-charging schools and schools in the Free Education Scheme (FES), resulted in an unequal distribution of care and a negative student care experience. From its inception in the 1970s, guidance in Irish schools had a holistic, equality agenda, and it is discussed as one means of reducing the impacts o f many inequalities in schools. While guidance in all schools helps students make choices in their lives, the thesis showed that it operated differently in fee-charging schools and FES schools, with greater demands from students for help with personal decisionmaking and counselling in FES schools and by contrast a greater emphasis on educational decision-making and career decision-making in fee-charging schools. Factors such as social class, familial habitus, parent-power, cultural, social and economic capitals, and institutional habitus were shown to influence young people and their parents’ decision-making, and in turn the guidance provided in schools. Care was not distributed equally across all school types. The study demonstrated that students in FES schools experienced compromised care, due to a large reduction in counselling appointments. With a reported rise in student mental health issues, the demand for counselling in FES schools increased, but as these schools prioritised career guidance, counselling was neglected, the quality of the service suffered and it became a reactionary crisis-intervention service, mirroring the trivialisation and neglect of the affective in education (Lynch, 2009). Managing greater care demands with less time resources also increased guidance counsellors’ stress. The change from an ex-quota to an in-quota guidance allocation thus had an unequal impact across schools and a negative impact on the quality and distribution of student care in some school types.