At the end of last year - three months after the Scottish government’s planned date for putting a counsellor in every secondary - over 100 counsellors were missing from schools, documents released today show.

The documents - revealed through a Scottish Liberal Democrat freedom of information request - reveal that by December 2020, whilst every council said secondary students had “access” to a counsellor, only 215 school counsellors had been recruited.

The SNP government had originally promised 350 school counsellors by September, a commitment that was later pushed forward until the end of October.

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The party also stands accused by the Lib Dems of spending months “ducking and diving” questions across the Scottish Parliament about recruitment of counsellors when young people - who were returning to school following the first national lockdown - needed support most.

Mental health: Children ‘badly let down by lack of counsellors in schools’

In March this year, during the final weeks of the previous Scottish Parliament, when asked by the Lib Dems whether the target had been met - both in the Scottish Parliament’s education and skills committee and in parliamentary questions - education secretary John Swinney “withheld” the figures, the Lib Dems say.

On 24 March, when asked by Lib Dem education spokesperson Beatrice Wishart for the number of new school counsellors recruited, Mr Swinney told the education committee he would have to write to them “to clarify the precise details”, but said: “From my recollection of parliamentary answers, I think that the commitment to that programme of employment has been completed and we are satisfied with the information that has come back from local authorities about that recruitment.”

In response to a parliamentary question on 24 March, again asking for the number of new school counsellors recruited, Mr Swinney said that councils had “made excellent progress in the provision of mental health support for young people, including the programme to provide access to counsellors in secondary schools” and that more information would be published in April - but failed to share the results of the research exercise into the delivery of the counsellor commitment, which reported in December.

Ms Wishart - who, like all politicians in Scotland, is in the last day of campagning for tomorrow’s parliamentary election - said: “These new documents show this flagship mental health recruitment target being missed then hidden. The SNP have been ducking and diving questions about school counsellors from across Parliament for months. Now we know why.

“Children and young people have been badly let down. There are almost 150 counsellors missing from schools at a time when they could be making all the difference. 

“The SNP government claim to be upfront with people. The latest wheeze is to say a target has been ‘reframed’. In anyone else’s book, it’s a target missed.”

In a submission to Holyrood’s education committee in September, The Spark, which is the largest provider of school-based counselling services in Scotland, warned that there were not enough qualified counsellors for the policy to be rolled out.

The organisation said: “We believe that there are insufficient numbers of qualified, quality counsellors to deliver the Scottish government commitment [regarding] school counselling.

“With our experience over the last few years, we have built a solid reputation and the demand for our services is greater than our availability of counsellors. At The Spark we believe that counselling taking place in a school environment should be short-term, solution-focused interventions.”

Tes Scotland contacted the Scottish government for comment and asked for an up-to-date figure on school counsellor recruitment, but at the time of publication no response had been received.