Counsellor resource: working with SLT in a school

How can you ensure senior leadership teams (SLT) understand what you do?

Let’s start with a fundamental truth: all schools are buzzing, busy hubs of activity and within this hive, SLT members are frequently juggling administrative, managerial and teaching responsibilities. 

Instead of working in isolation, a counsellor has to make themselves heard. Fellow counsellor Buket Ayaz emphasises that counsellors should share their successes through the 2Cs and 2Ps method: Communication, Collaboration, Proactivity, and Providing data. 

It is a counsellor’s role to establish a viable communication channel with SLT and involve them in the initiatives preparing students for university, such as college fairs, scholarship applications and campus events. 

Our school uses Google workspace, where we maintain a college counselling calendar that aligns with the whole school calendar. There is also a dedicated shared drive where SLT have access to a range of data and resources making our counselling process as transparent as possible. 

However, the most valuable initiatives have been the in-person ones. We established a weekly careers and counselling meeting with SLT. We use the Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, and Control process during our weekly meetings. This has helped us convey to SLT the time, commitment and needs of the counselling team. It also allows us to share the progress of our students, the changing nature of university destinations, and alternative pathways chosen by students. 

Once the relationship between our SLT and counsellors had strengthened, a spirit of collaboration emerged. We invited SLT to all career, university and alumni-related events in school, often to introduce the event or act as keynote speaker. We found this had two added benefits: it legitimised the counselling team to parents and students and gave SLT direct feedback from parents, students and alumni about the work we do. 

What can SLT do for you?

SLT helped us transform career guidance and counselling at Avenor College. Our SLT helped us make significant changes to the curriculum in high school.  

Students in Grades 9-11 have two lessons a week with a focus on preparing for careers and university, followed by a two-week internship programme in their area of interest at the end of the year. In Grade 12, we were able to implement a counselling timetable for one-to-one meetings, helping us better support university applications with early deadlines.
 
We were also able to broaden the scope of career counselling through organising networking invites, liaising with alumni, working with heads of departments and having a student representative body that offers feedback. As an already crucial community link, SLT were able to absorb these new responsibilities organically in the work they do, helping us to focus on our own work.  

SLT also offered us time to pursue CPD opportunities and welcomed the need for additional counsellors. 

How can you prove your worth as a counsellor?

Data analyses and student success stories are invaluable quantitative and qualitative evidence of the value of counselling.

Counsellors, however, operate within school-wide systems and their own effectiveness can be helped or hindered by factors beyond their control. This is where inspections and accreditations can be profoundly helpful assessors, with the benefit of an external perspective on how the counsellor is able to operate within the school. 

At Avenor College, we sought feedback on our counselling services from two external assessors: BSO and Career Mark. We emphasised the nature of our careers programme and university admissions guidance to BSO inspectors, seeking feedback that we could discuss with SLT and implement. Our students were found to be “exceptionally well prepared for the next stage of their education” because the provisions in the curriculum and support network surrounding the students were well entrenched.

The second assessor was specific to our careers and university team – we applied for the Career Mark Award to have recognition for our school’s service and to ensure that all stakeholders were aware that students would receive the best possible support in-house (rather than with external agencies).

More than from BSO, it is with the Career Mark Award that we received the vital feedback and next steps we were seeking and gave our team proof of worth in meetings with SLT. Part of educating SLT on career value is proving to them the value of the careers team.

Training like the THE Counsellor Accreditation Programme is ideal for continued professional development as well as showcasing to SLT that counsellors operate within an informed and ever-changing context and community. Particularly for new counsellors, the CAP is an invaluable resource, providing a bedrock of essential knowledge, approaches and ideas.