Education Counselor Job Description, Duties, and Responsibilities

This post provides detailed information on the education counselor job description, including the key duties, tasks, and responsibilities they commonly perform.

It also highlights the major requirements you may be expected to fulfill to be hired for the education counselor role by most recruiters/employers.

What Does an Education Counselor Do?

Education counselors are responsible for helping young people in building a career, and also serve as a support apparatus that enhances the growth of young people both as individuals and equally as professionals.

The education counselor job description entails carrying out assessments or interviews on students, as well as conducting follow-up interviews to make sure the students’ needs have been met.

The need for an education counselor is of great importance in the school system. Students are most times overwhelmed by doubts, inability to decide, and confusion when it comes to choosing a career path.

This is where an education counselor who may also be called school counselor in some organizations comes in.

He/she plays a very crucial role in the educational life-pattern of young people.

Education counselors tend to come up with suitable career paths for each person. Their advice is usually based on the individual’s interest and abilities, and in some cases their skills.

School counselors usually focus their strengths on identifying personal problems, social problems and other academic problems that tend to affect the student’s performance.

Their duties and responsibilities also entails providing guidance to individual student as well as a group on various social issues like peer group influence and maltreatment within an academic environments.

They also liaise with parents and teachers to ensure students educational progress, and to give information about students’ growth to stakeholders.

They work to ensure students attain success in their chosen career path.

Education counselors are also involved in providing advice to students on issues like study habit and truancy, and also helping them to overcome these issues.

Their work description also extends to students’ background (i.e. issues that students encounter at home that in one way or the other have a telling effect on their academic performance.

These may include incidents like psychological and physical abuse, and even divorce of the student’s parents.

A counselor of education also helps in preparing students for future educational experiences and encouraging them to persevere in the face of challenges.

They may also try as much as possible to make sure that students adhere to all rules and regulations that guide students generally.

Provision of information concerning choice of degree, career paths, and admission requirements with regards to different institutions also form part of the description of an education counselor’s job.

On their own part too, school counselors embark on various trainings, professional conferences, and educational meetings in a bid to enhance/improve their abilities and competencies.

They also have the responsibility of documenting reports concerning each student and presenting them to the school administration/body.

Basically, an education counselor tends to help ease students through the tumultuous school life.

With the help of a counselor, students can find their way through problems that affect their academic performance with confidence.

Education counselors whose work cut across different levels of education – elementary, high school, and college – should also be able to build a good relationship between teachers and students’ parents.

Education Counselor Job description Example/Template

Education counselors perform various functions in helping students make better career choices and becoming successful adults.

Here below is an example of education counselor job description, comprising of the various tasks, duties, and responsibilities that typically form their work activities:

• Organize counselling programs that inculcates the student(s) in question
• Mediate in the case of misunderstandings between students and teachers
• Listen to students’ problems at all times, especially when it has to do with their academic, social, or emotional lives, and suggest solutions where necessary
• Refer students to social welfare homes or to a psychiatric/mental counselor, especially in extreme cases
• Review both current and past reports about the student(s), in a bid to check their progress levels and also make further recommendations if need be
• Make sure that students’ parents or guardians are actively involved in the development and administration of intervention procedures when the need arises
• Serve as a guide for students when applying for scholarship and other forms of academic funding
• Attend staff meetings so as to be kept in the know on issues that have to do with students’ academic performance and life.

Requirements – Skills, Abilities, and Knowledge – for Education Counselor Role

If you are applying for the job of a school or education counselor, here are common requirements to expect from most employers:

• Excellent communication skill (especially listening skills) is highly required for an education counselor to have to be good on the job
• Patience should be a virtue worn at all times by individuals who work as education counselors
• Ability to discern body language of students is also important
• Ability to be proactive and not reactive at all times is of great importance
• Interpersonal (mediation) skills is needed for education counselor to be able to solve problems that may arise between parents and teachers, or even between teachers and students as the case may be
• He/she must be easily approachable by teachers, students, and parents. That is to say that the counselor should be friendly and accommodating
• 2-5 years of working in a similar role or capacity
• A first degree in Counselling; a Masters degree will be a welcome addition.

Conclusion

If you are an employer in the process of hiring new education counselors, you can make a good job description for the role from the sample copy provided above.

You can create a detailed work description that can help you attract the best counselors to your school from the duties and responsibilities of the role given in this post.

Also, if you are an individual interested in the education counselor career, you will have your knowledge of the role significantly improved by reading this post.