School Counsellor - Old Guildford Public School

School counsellors are an essential part of the department’s School Counselling Service.

They provide counselling and psychological assessment of students to complement and enhance the work of teachers to strengthen student learning and wellbeing outcomes, and they help families understand and manage their children’s learning and mental health needs. This is a truly collegiate role offering unique challenges and opportunities – both in your professional development and your ability to make an impact on the lives of children and young people. 

The successful candidate will be based at Old Guildford Public School and provided with opportunities to work across the lifespan with both primary and high school aged students. Working as a school counsellor in a NSW public school will enable you to engage with a diversity of students (and school communities) like no other child and adolescent psychologist role can. This is a chance to use your skills to make a real difference in the lives of children and young people at a time in their lives when it matters most.

School counsellors receive regular, individual professional supervision with the Senior Psychologist Education and participate in group and peer supervision as a member of the broader district school counselling team. You will most likely be collaborating with a number of school communities and colleagues, as well as outside agencies, with the opportunity to use and expand the full range of your skills and expertise as part of a supportive, multidisciplinary team.

School counsellors are provided with regular opportunities to participate in continuing professional development and the NSW Department of Education will support you to complete or maintain your registration with the Psychology Board of Australia. Other benefits include school holiday leave, travel allowances and health and wellbeing benefits such as our Fitness Passport program. The department will also cover your indemnity insurance as a psychologist.

Old Guildford Public School (OGPS) is located in South Western Sydney and proudly built on Darug Land, home to the Cabrogal Clan. The current student enrolment K-6 is 429 and we have two Preschool groups of 20 students over a five-day fortnight.  Our embedded culture of high expectations and inclusivity ensure that students, staff and the community work together respectfully.  As a multicultural school, 96% of our students come from non-English speaking backgrounds. We have students from 28 language backgrounds with the main being Arabic. In addition, we are proud of the small but significant number of Aboriginal students enrolled at our school.

Our learning environment reflects strong student wellbeing principles. To aid in the development of the whole child, compassionate and skilled staff offer a wide range of extracurricular activities. These include, but are not limited to, the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden program, coding, chess, debating, recorder, choir, and a wide range of sports.

Through our situational analysis we have identified five areas that will assist our school to work towards achieving our system negotiated targets: Data to inform practice, explicit teaching in literacy and numeracy, effective feedback, collaboration and improving attendance. For more information, please visit the school website Old Guildford Public School

• Experience in counselling using evidence-based interventions with a demonstrated understanding of the mental health needs of children and young people.
• Experience in the psychological assessment of children and young people, including case formulation and report writing.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with key stakeholders to improve the learning and wellbeing outcomes of children and young people including students from diverse backgrounds and needs.

• Be a registered or provisionally registered psychologist, or eligible for registration with the Psychology Board of Australia.
• Ability and willingness to travel between worksites.
• This position is under the Teachers award (Crown Employees (Teachers in Schools and Related Employees) Salaries and Conditions Award 2024). To be eligible to apply, you must have an unconditional, full approval to teach or have eligibility to apply for an approval to  teach. If you do not hold a full approval to teach with the NSW Department of Education, you are required to commence the application process at the same time as you apply for this teaching opportunity.

Successful applicants will be provided with a Departmental induction program, ongoing professional learning and professional supervision.
Find out more about working in the school counselling service.  Visit the Department’s School Counselling Service pages to discover more about working as a school psychologist or school counsellor in NSW public schools.

Applicants are to include details of their WWCC clearance number as part of this application.

About the NSW Department of Education

The Department of Education is the largest provider of public education in Australia with responsibility for delivering high-quality public education to two-thirds of the NSW student population. We welcome applications from all ages and genders, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, the LGBTQIA+ community, veterans, refugees and people with disability. If we can make some adjustments to our recruitment/interview process to better enable you to shine, please contact the Diversity and Inclusion Team (*****@det.nsw.edu.au) or visit NSW Department of Education Diversity and Inclusion

New merit selection application guidelines for classroom teachers, executives and principals have been introduced to provide greater clarity to applicants and selection panels. The guidelines are located here. To ensure that your application complies with the guideline page limits, your attachments must be in PDF format.

Note: Applications must be lodged electronically. No paper-based application will be accepted