Counsellor Competency for Non-Academic Issues: A Conceptual Framework for Indian School Counsellors

Children spend most of their time growing up in a school, so much that they have been considered a child’s ‘second home’. Due to the nature of development, children must be cared for in many avenues to grow into wholesome adults. School Counsellors, therefore, play a critical role in assisting and guiding students through adaptation and developmental difficulties. School counselling in India is still at a nascent stage. High school students especially face several concerns that are not limited to academics. The current paper attempts to understand the non-academic mental health concerns faced by Indian high school students and whether in-house school counsellors can deal with them adequately through a qualitative examination. A semi-structured interview was conducted with a sample of six high school counsellors in India with over two years of work experience. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that counsellors faced certain hurdles in several dimensions (access to resources, institutional interferences, ethical ambiguity, autonomy and additional responsibilities) that prevented them from providing their services appropriately. Additionally, the emerging results of the study were used to develop a competency checklist that could be used in institutes to recruit employees, review performance and develop a competency framework for present and future high school counsellors working in India.