Investigating the academic attainment and progress of children in receipt of individual counselling: A matched comparison study of primary school age children in England

Introduction

In 2016, the UK government identified the need for counselling services in schools to be evidence-based (Department for Education, 2016). While there is more empirical evidence on counselling and improvement in mental health (Daniunaite et al., Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 2015, 15, 251; Finning et al., European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2022, 31, 1591), less is known about the associations of counselling with children's academic attainment and progress.

Method

The aim of the paper was to provide more pieces of evidence on the possible associations between school-based individual counselling and the academic attainment and progress of primary school–aged children. The academic outcomes of children receiving one-to-one counselling were compared with those of children who did not receive counselling, but who had similar background characteristics. Coarsened exact matching method was used to match similar children for these comparisons based on national data sets available in England. Data were analysed with inferential statistics and multilinear regression.

Findings

Before matching the samples, analyses revealed children attending Place2Be's counselling services were significantly more likely to be boys (56.6% vs. 51.1%), of ethnic minority origin (46.4% vs. 21.5%), eligible for free school meals (FSM; 52.7% vs. 16.9%) and have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) status (43.1% vs. 21.1%) than the comparison group. They also had lower academic attainment than children who were not in counselling. However, after a coarsened exact matching on relevant background characteristics, the Place2Be sample was found to have similar levels of academic progress to the matched national sample, suggesting they did not fall behind similar children.

Conclusions

Findings indicate that individual school-based counselling may be helpful as a potential intervention for supporting vulnerable children's (defined as those identified by schools or parents as in need of individual counselling) academic progress in primary schools, as well as socio-emotional outcomes; however, further research is needed.