In order to help school students cope better with academics and personal life, the School Education Department is planning to hire more psychologists to visit schools across the State.
In October 2013, the department launched their mobile counselling van, where 10 psychologists were hired to travel across the 32 districts to provide psychological support to students. Now, a proposal has been sent to increase the number of counsellors to be able to cover all districts comprehensively.
“At present, 10 people are covering all 32 districts, and so it is not possible to provide counselling and support for all schools in a district,” S. Kannappan, Director of School Education said, adding that they were now approaching the Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA) for funding.
The psychologists will also train teachers and other counsellors to deal with students and identify children at risk. According to the data available with the department, since June 2014, a total of 1,188 school in the State had been covered and 2,44,669 students have received group counselling and individual attention was given to 9,161 students.
According to the psychologists, most children face stress, memory loss and concentration problems. “For adolescents, we provide sexual counselling and help with issues like pornography addiction,” said S. Arul Vadivu, psychologist in charge of three districts around Coimbatore.
“Some students need additional counselling, especially those who come from troubled families. For these students we schedule private sessions,” said Baby Deva Kiruba, the Chennai region counsellor. She added that although they tried to have one session every month, it was difficult since they covered three or four districts each.
School principals say that psychological counselling has made a big difference, but they would like more regular sessions. “A year down the line, there is a big difference especially when it comes to grades and violence in school,” P. Rajkumar, principal of one of the Government Higher Secondary Schools said.
“The psychologists have visited our school thrice in the past one year, it would be helpful if they came more often,” he added.
