School counselor

A school counselor is a counselor and an educator who works in elementary, middle, and high schools to provide academic, career, college access, and personal/social competencies to every K-12 student. The interventions used include: Developmental school counseling curriculum lessons and annual planning for every student, and culturally competent group and individual counseling. School Counselors use specific skills in advocacy, leadership, systemic change, technology integration, equity assessment, and teaming and collaboration with other stakeholders in a data-driven comprehensive developmental school counseling program. Older, dated terms for the profession were "guidance counselor" or "educational counselor" but "School Counselor" is preferred due to professional school counselors' advocating for every child's academic, career, and personal/social success in every elementary, middle, and high school (ASCA, 2005) ^[1].

 In the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific, the terms school counselor, school guidance counselor, and guidance teacher are also used with the traditional emphasis career development ^[2]. Countries vary in how aschool counseling program and school counseling program services are provided based on economics (funding for schools and school counseling programs), social capital (independent versus public schools), and School Counselor certification and credentialing movements in Education departments, professional associations, and national and local legislation.^[2].

The major accreditation body forCounselor Education/School Counseling programs is the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), which provides international program accreditation in Counselor Education disciplines including school counseling ^[3].

Worldwide, there are large achievement, opportunity, funding, and attainment gaps for who has access to a quality elementary, middle, and high school education and can then pursue additional educational resources including college. In some countries, school counseling, frequently career education/development/counseling, is provided by educational specialists (for example, Botswana, China, Finland, Israel, Malta, Nigeria, Romania, Taiwan, Turkey, United States). In other cases, school counseling is provided by classroom teachers who either have such duties added to their typical teaching load or teach only a limited load that also includes school counseling activities (for example- India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Zambia).^[2]. There are groups in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe that have provided international counseling conferences but most have not had an exclusive school counseling focus. The IAEVG focuses primarily on career development with some international school counseling articles and conference presentationss ^[2].