Summary
Students’ mental health is strongly linked to their engagement, achievement, and school attendance. Counselling in Schools is an initiative which began in 2021 with the aim of providing evidence-based counselling support in primary, intermediate, and small secondary schools, to help young people thrive at school. The Education Review Office looked at the effectiveness of Counselling in Schools, how well it reached the students it is targeted at, the impact it had, and some lessons for counselling programmes in the future. We found that counselling improves students’ mental health, and we also saw some encouraging signs of improved learning and wellbeing more widely.
You can read this report and the accompanying suite of resources on ERO's evidence and insights website: Someone to talk to: Evaluation of Counselling in Schools (ero.govt.nz)