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In so far as the Education Department is concerned, we advocate a Whole School Approach to Guidance whereby all school staff, under the leadership of the principal, are involved to create a positive and caring school environment for the holistic development of students. A positive school environment can enhance students' self esteem and enable students to cope with their problems. To date 260 (about 60%) secondary schools and 650 (about 79%) primary schools have adopted this approach.
(a) In addition to the whole school approach on guidance, the Department has taken a wide range of measures to prevent student suicide, including:
Conducting seminars and workshops for guidance teachers on crisis. management; issuing a resource package on 'Understanding Student Suicide' with emphasis on detection and prevention of suicide; setting up telephone hotlines for teachers on handling crisis; and providing professional support to back up teachers on the management of students at risk.
* Strengthening students' coping skills by arranging regular talks by doctors on mental health and stress management; encouraging schools to run student group programmes on family life education, peer support programmes etc with the help of education psychologists and education counsellors; producing video tapes and guidance materials for discussion with students; and producing a curriculum kit on parent-child relationship.
* Strengthening parental support by issuing a series of leaflets on parenting to enhance parents' awareness of proper method of communication with their children; funding the production of a special TV drama series to enhance parents' awareness and distributing such video tapes to all schools; and encouraging schools to set up parent teacher associations and promote parent education. At present, 320 schools have set up parent teacher associations. Another 47 are in the process of setting up similar associations.
* By providing, through its team of education psychologists (26) and education counsellors (10), specialist guidance and counselling service to schools including support to the schools' own counselling staff. These latter staff comprise 194 Student Guidance Teachers (SGTs)/Student Guidance Officers (SGOs) for the primary schools, and 250 school social worker (SSWs) and some 400 guidance teachers (GTs) for the secondary schools. Educational psychologists and counsellors hold professional qualifications in education psychology or social work. SGOs, SGTs and GTs undertake in-service training courses of varying duration from 4 months to one year, while SSWs hold degrees in social work. In addition, all attend professional development courses or training on a continuing basis.
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