KUCHING: All school teachers should also be exposed to basic counselling skills as they are in a pilot position to provide support, guidance and intervention to help students manage their problems effectively.
Welfare, Women and Family Development Minister Datuk Fatimah Abdullah highlighted that ordinary school teachers can act as counsellor since students share a closer connection with their teachers.
“Form teachers especially are in a better position to communicate with their students as they have built a close connection together,” she told The Borneo Post when contacted yesterday.
“I believe that a student will prefer to approach their form teacher or favourite subject teacher about their problems because the trust between them has been forged,” she elaborated.
Noting that the big ratio of one teacher counsellor to 500 students was no longer suitable, she gave her support to the proposal by National Union of Teaching Profession (NUTP) to increase teacher counsellors in schools.
But more importantly, Fatimah added: “We need to train our own school teachers and equip them with skills such as empathic listening and attending skills to allow them to help students profesionally.”
NUTP president Hashim Adnan had on Monday highlighted in Bernama the need to increase teacher counsellors to narrow the ratio to one teacher counsellor to 300 or 350 students.
On the Healthy Mind Programme screening conducted on 19,919 students from 357 schools nationwide, which showed that 7.45 per cent suffered from depression while 7.59 per cent had stress problems, Fatimah expressed her concern on the constant pressure put on students in an exam-oriented education system.
“Societal expectations and setting high academic standards have some form of impact on students,” she said.
“However, we are slowly changing the education system to focus more on the holistic development of students and (make it) less exam-oriented,” she added.