Senator Win Gatchalian is considering filing an amendment to Republic Act No. 9258 or the Guidance and Counseling Act of 2004 to enable the Department of Education (DepEd) to hire more school guidance counselors.
Guidance counselors, Gatchalian said, are vital for schools to be able to adequately address the needs of children-at-risk (CARs) in order to prevent them from becoming children in conflict with the law (CICLs) or juvenile offenders.
In particular, the legislator said he is looking to modify the qualifications for the guidance counselor licensure examination as provided in Section 13 of the law.
“The current requirements of the law may be too stringent and may have been a factor in the low number of guidance and counseling graduates applying for a license. Sa ngayon kasi bago ka makapag-board exam para makakuha ng lisensya, required na may master’s degree sa guidance and counseling ang isang aplikante,” the lawmaker said.
“The current requirements of the law may be too stringent and may have been a factor in the low number of guidance and counseling graduates applying for a license.”
“Para magkaroon ng lisensya ang isang teacher, bachelor’s degree lang ang kailangan bago makapag-board exam. So we are now looking into the possibility of allowing bachelor’s degree holders to take the guidance and counseling licensure exam and waive the licensure exam requirement for those with at least a master’s degree and relevant experience,” the senator added.
Moreover, he said they are also looking into revisiting and relaxing the guidance counselor to student ratio requirement to be able to arrive at a feasible number, both for the guidance counselors and the budget needed for their salaries.
DepEd at present requires public and private elementary and high schools to hire one guidance counselor for every 500 students. The Philippines, however, only has 3,220 registered guidance counselors as of July 2017 since the first batch of licensure examinees in 2008.
Gatchalian said that with the current DepEd requirement, 52,264 guidance counselors are needed nationwide for the 26,311,949 kindergarten to senior high school students as of Academic Year 2017-2018.
“Kailangan natin ang guidance counselors para maituwid ang landas nila ng mga CARs. Tinuturing natin na pangalawang tahanan para sa mga kabataan ang ating mga paaralan, therefore, children, especially CARs should be nurtured in schools beyond academic learning para hindi sila tuluyang maging CICLs,” he added.
“Children should be nurtured in schools beyond academic learning.”
Gatchalian stressed that strengthening counseling in schools and keeping children in schools is a better alternative in providing intervention programs for CARs and CICLs rather than lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR).
According to the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC), the typical profile of a CICL is male, between the ages of 14 and 17, and has either low educational attainment or has stopped schooling.
