There were huge sighs of relief when the Minister for Education and Science, Micheal Martin, announced last July that he intended to establish a national psychological service. It's what schools have been crying out for years.
The establishment of a comprehensive psychological service is vital, schools say. The costs will be heavy, but the fact remains that the cost of supporting children from any early stage and ensuring that they are equipped to lead balanced and productive lives will be far less than those required to support a vast, dependant and disaffected underclass.
Although enormous dissatisfaction has been expressed with the psychological service currently offered by the Department, it's worth noting that school complaints are about the quantity of the service rather than the quality of it.
A report - Principals' Perceptions of the Guidance Service in Post Primary Schools - recently published by the National Centre for Guidance in Education, shows that principals are largely satisfied with the quality of the psychological service. They report positively about behavioural changes in pupils, parents and staff after intervention and in the level of follow-up feedback.
However, almost two-thirds of schools say that the availability of school psychologists is unsatisfactory. While nearly half of the schools report waiting times for a psychologist of one month, over one third of schools say that they have to wait three months or more.
THE Department currently employs 36 psychologists, 20 of whom work in second-level schools. In theory every second-level school in the country has a psychologist assigned to it. Dublin City and County VECs have their own psychological services.
The Department employs 13 psychologists to service primary schools in disadvantaged areas in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and in west Tallaght, Clondalkin in Dublin and south Tipperary. This service to primary schools is to be further expanded in the coming months when 15 newly recruited psychologists will come on stream.
According to a 1996 IMPACT report - Supporting Children a Psychological Service to Schools - the current psychologist to pupil ratio is 1:18,000 in second-level schools and 1:7,500 in those primary schools which are served by the system. Some 80 per cent of primary pupils have no access to an educational psychological service, the report says.
Given the figures, it's hardly surprising that principals describe the service as a fire brigade one. With psychologists so thin on the ground, their work load is enormous. Many principals say that they would call them in emergencies only. Much of the Department psychologists' time is spent on case work.
They work with and assess individual students and report back to their parents and teachers. At second-level referrals are usually made by a principal, guidance counsellor or remedial teacher. At first level, it's either the principal or home/school liaison teacher who makes the referral - with the full consent of parents in all cases.
The psychologists are also involved in indirect, `preventative' work. This involves working with teachers on specific issues - with teachers in infants or junior classes to help them develop the social and personal skills of their pupils, or with teachers to develop their own assessment and screening skills, for example.
In an ideal world, a Department psychologist explains, the psychological service would prefer to spend more time working with teachers to develop their skills.
Because the psychologists are spread so thinly, the service has inevitably developed into a band-aid one. As a result, the perception has grown that the psychologists are the people who can administer a quick fix to students. In many establishments there's a belief that, if only a psychologist would intervene, all the school's problems would disappear. Understandably, many psychologists find this irksome.
There is, however, a huge body of opinion which believes that a service where the main focus is on supporting teachers, rather than on individual casework, would be the most beneficial.
THE psychological service set up in 1960 by the City of Dublin VEC was the first such service in the State. It now boasts six full-time psychologists. Six years ago, Co Dublin VEC also established a service which employs two psychologists for 20 schools. "Our case-load is huge," comments psychologist Breda O'Reilly-Hogan. "We're the largest and fastest-growing VEC in the State and the demands on us are increasing."
The IMPACT report recommends the establishment of a comprehensive psychological service providing a ratio of one psychologist to every 5,000 pupils and a 1:3,000 in disadvantaged areas. This would mean employing up to 215 psychologists to work in the field.
Extra psychologists would be required for management grades and to extend the service to pre-school children and to early drop-outs. "While this number represents a five-fold increase in the current staff," the report points out, "it is still a very small number of professionals when compared to the 40,000 teachers at present in the system."
Some schools believe that a national psychological service should provide more than simply an educational psychology service. "It's vital that we have a school-based service that includes clinical psychologists," says Michael Finn, principal of St Joseph's National School, Bonnybrook, Dublin. "The child guidance clinics have huge waiting lists. You could wait up to 12 months. We don't bother referring children any more but it means that teachers are left to cope with them in the classroom. Guidance clinics are based in hospitals which have the wrong connotation for children and their parents.
"A school-based service would make them more comfortable - even if they have emotional or medical problems they would rather see a psychologist in a school situation than in a hospital."
