The roles and functions of school counselors Essay

In 1996, a directive from the Ministry of Education clarified the roles and functions of school counselors. It emphasized there main areas (a) academic-related issues, (b) career guidance and development issues and (c) psychosocial and mental health related issues (See& Ng,2010). All school need to have a full time school counselor that provides guidance and counselling services to the students. According to Malik and Junainah (2013), the counselor's role was to develop students' knowledge and skills through structured experiences designed to support them in developing the skills necessary to function as responsible and productive citizens. This shows that the counselling in Malaysia have a great influence in educational system.
In the school context, among the three areas of the roles and functions of the school counselor, academic related issues will be stressed on. This is because academic achievement plays a vital role for the students' life especially during the high school. The achievement will decide for their future whether they supposed to enter the university or not and how their live in the future. Achievements of our students have implications that can affect individuals and the communities in which they live (Moody, 2010). When school performance is low, students are at risk for dropping out (Boyce, 2011). Students at risk of dropping out also show a high level of underachievement (Skinner,2008).
There will be factors that make the students do not perform in their studies. As a school counselor, they need to know the reason of it in order to helping them improving their academic achievement. According to Bondurant (2010), prior research has focused primarily on how concurrent factors such as difficulties with peer relationships, lower socioeconomic status, and lack of parent support contribute to academic underachievement in young children and in adolescents. As stated by (Skinner, 2008) when the reasons for underachievement are better understood, school counselors and researchers will be able to evaluate intervention plans that directly address those reasons. Greater understanding of the roots of academic underachievement should contribute to improvements in the effectiveness of early identification and intervention (Bondurant, 2010).
Students of underachievers needs some help by other people in motivate and remind them about the importance of the good achievement at school. In school, school counsellor is the one who can together help them in defining their goal of life. It is the duty of the school to provide the guidance and counselling services to the students because they spend most of their time in the school. It is crucial for the school counsellor in finding some intervention that can more likely help the students to graduate and be successful in their college and careers. School counselors work with students by analysing and evaluating students' abilities, interests, skills and achievement. Test information and other data are often used as the basis for helping students develop immediate and long-range plans (American School Counselor Association, 2003, p. 41). Therefore, this research is meant to see the application of group counselling techniques in dealing with underachieving students.