Have you ever noticed how when schools, communities, NGOs, and government institutions team up, public school counseling begins to shift from aspiration into action?
For the IC3 Movement, highlighting these collaborations shows how education policy, public school counseling, and government and education reform can work together with inspiring results.
When public school counseling is embedded through shared effort rather than placed entirely on any single actor, it often becomes more sustainable, more accepted, and more effective.
Education policy provides the framework. Nongovernmental players bring innovation, community trust, and flexibility. Government and education reform set the standards, provide funding, and enable scale.
Here are ways these collaborations amplify impact:
These examples show that government and education reform can make a real difference to public school counseling when there is political will, clear policy, and resources.
In the State Technical Schools of São Paulo (Brazil), there is government-funded work on both initial and continuing training for school counseling. This is done through statewide or official higher education institution channels.
Counselors and related staff receive professional development that strengthens the capacity of public schools to address student emotional, academic, and social needs. [Source]
In Paraná, a state in Brazil, the Government of the State’s Education Department (Secretaria de Educação do Paraná) partnered with the State University of Londrina (Universidade Estadual de Londrina, UEL) to expand psychological support in public schools.
This programme provides free psychological services to students, teachers, and school staff. It includes emotional/psychosocial support for school communities, especially when crises or violence occur. This is part of initiatives such as Escola Escuta and Bem Cuidar, which are school listening/support programs. [Source]
In South Africa, the Public School Partnerships (PSP) initiative brings together provincial government education departments, non-profit organizations, funders, and civil society to manage and improve jointly no-fee (i.e., free) public schools serving vulnerable communities.
The PSP model includes shared management, additional technical support, flexible resources, and more accountability. While PSP is about more than just counseling, it includes psychosocial support, safe school environments, learner support agents, and a focus on learner well-being as integral to teaching and learning. [Source]
The South African Department of Basic Education has partnered with GIZ (a German development agency) to launch the National Inclusive Safer Schools Partnership (NISSP). This partnership focuses on enhancing school safety, promoting student resilience, preventing violence, including gender-based violence, and establishing “safe spaces” in schools where learners can report issues and receive support, such as counseling or peer/mentor support.
This model shows how the government, international partner, plus local community institutions collaborate under national policy to boost learner well-being. [Source]
A Brookings report shows that in the United States, 23 states mandate school counseling in elementary schools, while 30 states mandate it in secondary schools. Some states also set target student-to-counselor ratios.
In New York State, the Board of Regents updated policy in 2017 to require comprehensive school counseling programs in all public school districts. The goal is to shift from reactive guidance to more systemic support. The regulatory reform came with clearer definitions of counselor roles and stronger connections with equity and inclusion.
States also regulate credentialing. In every U.S. state and territory, professional school counselors must hold a state credential. That usually means a master’s degree plus supervised training. [Source]
Finland offers strong examples of how national policy supports public school counseling in education reform. [Source]
Finnish education policy includes laws that require “pupil welfare” services in schools. That involves school counseling or equivalent social and psychological support.
Finland uses a three-tier support model under its Basic Education Act. Schools first offer general support to all students. If needed, they move to intensified support. Special support comes last. This model helps ensure that public school counseling or guidance is part of how Finland handles student difficulties early.
Collaboration with families and the community is built in under Finland’s national curriculum and laws. That means education policy does not treat counseling inside schools in isolation. It treats public school counseling as part of a support ecosystem.
In Australia, there are programs where the education sector, local government, and health departments collaborate to deliver school-based health programmes. These include mental health promotion, preventive wellbeing work, and integrating psychosocial support in school settings.
Research into these programmes finds that strong collaboration (clear communication, role clarity, understanding across sectors) makes them more effective. [Source]
From these different countries and programmes, we can see several patterns that make collaborative models succeed in strengthening public school counseling and student support under government policy:
.. an uplifting picture of how public school counseling and student well-being improve when governments collaborate with universities, NGOs, community partners, and donors. From Brazil to South Africa to Australia, we see that public school counseling becomes more real, more accepted, more embedded when many hands build it together.
For the IC3 Movement, these models are both inspiration and proof that government and education reform do not have to happen in isolation. When collaborative efforts are woven into education policy, public school counseling shines. Every child in every public school can benefit when these partnerships thrive, when student support is built into the system through those positive collaborations.