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A whole school approach to guidance counselling has been promulgated by Irish policy-makers as a model of good practice in the delivery of guidance counselling in the post-primary sector since the 1998 Education Act (DES, 2005a(DES, , 2009(DES, , 2012. This approach to guidance counselling provision is viewed as a whole school responsibility where schools are expected to collaboratively develop a school guidance plan to support the needs of their students (DES, 2005a(DES, , 2012. The role of the regular teacher in a whole school approach to guidance counselling has received very little attention either in the Irish education system or in empirical research. This article will address this deficit through its discussion of a case study carried out in one school in 2012. It will position the findings from the study in the context of the re-allocation of post-primary guidance counselling provision in the national Budget 2012 that has witnessed the substantive erosion of the guidance counselling service in the last two years.

This article will discuss the findings of a single explanatory case study on the model of whole school guidance counselling in the Irish secondary school system which was carried out during a turbulent period of policy and practice changes in the delivery of guidance counselling services to students from 2012 onwards (Simons 1980;Yin 2014). Although the case study is positioned within a single voluntary school the findings may be typical of similar secondary schools settings in Ireland and abroad. Particular focus is given to explicating the key findings of the case study through the specific themes of; conceptions of whole school guidance counselling, the Irish integrated model of guidance counselling, stakeholder roles and responsibilities, and the effect of resource re-allocations by policy makers funding guidance school services.

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The delivery of a comprehensive career guidance service in secondary schools through the whole school model that equips students with requisite career learning and development competencies has garnered credence in recent years. This article deliberates on the current situation of this type of provision in secondary schools in Ireland and England and the implications for professional practice in both countries. Specifically, it considers the conditions that could support the delivery of a whole school approach to career guidance through the concept of professional capital.