Guidance and counselling services play an integral part in the overall student services department of any elementary, secondary or tertiary school. The aims of guidance and counseling programmes in schools are to assist individuals to develop the ability to understand themselves, to solve their own problems, and to make appropriate adjustments to their environment. Major guidance services include student appraisal,... Show more
Guidance and counselling services play an integral part in the overall student services department of any elementary, secondary or tertiary school. The aims of guidance and counseling programmes in schools are to assist individuals to develop the ability to understand themselves, to solve their own problems, and to make appropriate adjustments to their environment. Major guidance services include student appraisal, information giving, placement and follow-up, and counselling. Broadly conceived, two methods of counselling include directive and nondirective approaches.
On the one hand, directive counselling focuses attention on identifying and analyzing the problem and finding an appropriate solution to it using all available data. Nondirective counselling, on the other hand, provides the counselee not with a neat solution, but instead with the ability to meet her problem in a constructive way. Ten criteria are used in evaluating guidance and counselling programs: student needs, cooperation, process and product, balance, stability, flexibility, quality counselors, adequate counselor-student ratio, adequate physical facilities, and appropriate record keeping.
Reflecting on what birth the writing of this book, I’m glad to be an instrument God used to bring a challenging piece of this sort to projection. As a freelance journalist, I recently work on a writing project that required me to conduct survey in some Nigerian High Schools. Schools were randomly selected in some states across the nation. To my surprise, the result of the survey revealed that majority of Nigerian Schools doesn’t have, at least, a trained counselor as part of their staff. Students, staff and even parents are left alone to battle with their academic, social, psychological and emotional challenges, problems and difficulties. This is quit shocking!
I personally imagined lots of benefits that our school communities had missed because of failure to employ school counselor. Most especially, I pitied the students who daily have growing need to share their problems with an exposed, trusted and relational expert but are denied such a privilege. But, this was not the situation in the past. Schools in my own high school days had trained counselors to attend to students, staff and parents. To worsen the matter, most of our tertiary institutions also don’t have Guidance and Counselling office and staff.
Consequent on the above facts, I pick up the challenge to write on this subject.The book is therefore written to enlighten the general public, school proprietors and administrators, and the government about this omission in our schools. However, it’s ultimately written to advocate for the establishment of guidance and counselling services in our elementary, secondary and tertiary institutions of learning. I do hope that this piece will be instrumental in bringing revolutionary change in this respect. Happy reading!
