Guidance and counselling in schools

In this article, you will read about the functions performed by the school guidance counsellor in the school system. This will give you an insight into the different kinds of services that are offered by the professionally trained Guidance counselor in the school and its environment. You should be ready to make use of these services for the benefit of your students.

Who is the Guidance Counsellor?

The guidance counsellor being a new entrant into the educational setting is perceived differently by his or her public (other members of the school community such as the principal, teachers, parents, students, even the non-teaching staff). Denga, 1975 in Nwachukwu F. J. & Ugwuagbulam C. M (Ed) (2007), observed that is little surprising that the counsellors publics in the developing nations have a hazy, confused and blurred perception of who he or she is, his or her roles and functions.

This hazy and confused perception of the counsellor make it difficult for him or her to be accepted in the school system. Some see him or her as a spy and some as jack of all trades or busy body. But however, not with standing, a professional, Patterson (1967) in Nwachukwu F. J. and Ugwuegbulan, C. N. (ed) (2007) defines a counsellor as a person concerned with accepting responsibilities for assisting all persons and having as his major concern, the developmental needs and problems of youth.

Meanwhile, Denga (1983) noted that “a counsellor is a happy and jovial person who helps those who are in need”. The needs for which he provides help include the following:- educational, vocational, personal- social and psychological needs. This is to say that the counsellor is involved in assisting the students resolve their educational, vocational and social-personal problems. The school guidance counsellor is a member of the school with specialized skills who provide assistance to individual students and their parents in decisions making that ensure efficient and orderly progression of the students through the various stages of growth and development.

Functions of the School Counsellor

The functions carried out by the school guidance counsellor are made up of the execution of a number of highly specialized services that constitutes the pattern of activities within the school guidance programme. These services are the basic elements of guidance and counselling programme; they are the formalized actions or steps the school guidance counsellor take to make guidance and counselling operational and available to students.

These functions in the school setting include appraisal service, counselling service, information service, planning, placement and follow-up service, orientation service, consulting service, evaluation service and referral service.

Appraisal Service –

This could also be termed individual analysis. Okon (1984) remarked that appraisal is a developmental or longitudinal process of collecting, processing, storing and using a variety of objective and subjective personal and social information to help the school staff have a better understanding of the students as well as help individual student to better know and understand self.

Suffice it to say that appraisal service involves collecting, analyzing and using a variety of tools to gather data through which students are made to understand themselves. Through this function, the guidance counsellor makes a student to become aware of his characteristics, strengths and weaknesses and further develops rational decision making capabilities. This service enables the counsellor to provide relevant data that will enable parents, teachers and administrators understand students.

2. Counselling Service –

This function enables the counsellor who is trained to give assistance to and/or to have an interactive relationship with the counsellee who needs assistance. Through this service, counsellees are helped to deal effectively with self and the reality of his/her environment. The service regarded as the nucleus of guidance service helps facilitate self understanding and self development which afford individuals or group of people a better understanding of themselves in terms of their confused ideas, hopes, fears, feelings and aspirations.

3. Informative Service –

Through this service, the guidance counsellor is always able to provide the school and the students with better knowledge of educational, vocational and personal – social opportunities in order to have the benefit of making informed decision and choices. This function involves collection of data in diverse areas of education, career and social life for presentation to students in order to be informed so that they can make decisions with ease in increasingly complex society.

Planning Service – Guidance and counselling in schools

Planning is to decide ahead of time what an individual wants to do, and the way he will do it. Part of a guidance counsellor’s functions includes assisting the students plan their activities. The guidance counsellor helps students plan their educational, vocational and personal social activities realistically in order to assist them in achieving their goals.

Placement Service –

The guidance counsellor carries out placement functions in and outside the school setting. In the school setting, placement can be carried out by placing students in appropriate classes and/or schools, courses, training or vocations. He or she can also do placement for students who are to go for attachment, practical or industrial training outside the school setting. The counsellor is always armed with tools that could be used for effective placement within or outside the school setting.

Follow-up Service –

This function enables the guidance counsellor to see through the services he/she must have offered the counsellee. It is an avenue through which the counsellor determines the effectiveness of planning and placement activities. This service allows the counsellor to see and verify whether the guided or counseled individual or group is coping after guidance or counselling.

Orientation Service –

This function serves the purpose of acquainting new students in an academic environment with the facilities, challenges and problems and prospects in their new school. It is a guidance service that allows the guidance counsellor to make the new students psychologically stable in the new environment (new school) because they will be meeting with new set of people, administration, rules and regulations and environment which may require adjustment for them to be able to cope perfectly.

Evaluation Service –

This enables the guidance counsellor to assess the effectiveness of his stewardship in the school system. The evaluation can be carried out through the use of interview, observation or questionnaire. These measurement instruments are used to gather data which will reveal whether or not the services provided are adequate in the school. The gathered information will enable the counsellor to improve upon the services he/she is providing or modify or suspend anyone that is not achieving the desired result.

Consulting Service –

Consultation here refers to interaction between the guidance counsellor and other professionals in the school setting. It is an avenue through which technical assistance are offered to other professionals in the school in order to become more effective in the services they offer to the students and staff.

Referral Service of Guidance and counselling in schools

This is an act of transferring a client/counsellee to another professional or agency where his/her problem can be appropriately handled. The professional or agency may be within, or outside the school setting. Shertzer and Stone (1976) remarked that personnel or agency outside the school setting are used because they provide specialised services that the guidance counsellor cannot claim to have expertise in all sphere of endeavour, he makes referral with the consent of the client / counsellee on matters outside his/her competence.

The entire functions of the Guidance and counselling in schools are to assist each student to understand himself and live effectively in the society. The need for guidance services in the school system is therefore based on the assumption that the individual who understands himself and his environment will be more productive and effective in his entire endeavour. The objectives which the functions performed by the guidance counsellor in the school system according to Ipaye (1983) includes:

• To help students develop the skills of self study, self analysis and self understanding.
• Guidance services should help students develop awareness of opportunities in the personal, social, educational, vocational areas by providing them with appropriate, useful and useable information.
• Also, guidance services in the school should help students acquire the skills of collecting and using appropriate information.
• To assist all students in making appropriate and satisfactory personal, social, educational, vocational and leisure choices.
• Guidance service should help students develop positive attitude to self, to others, to appropriate national issues, to work and learning.
• To help students acquire as early as possible in their lives a positive image of selves through self understanding and self direction.
• Guidance services should help students who are under achieving to use their potentials to the maximum.
• Also, guidance services in the school should help students relate behaviour meaningfully to cognitive achievement and the chances of success in life.
• To help build up or sharpen the students’ perception of reality, development of a sense of autonomy and to whip up the motivation for creativity and productivity.
• Guidance and counselling in schools should assist students in the process of developing and acquiring skills in problem solving and decision making.
• To work with significant others in the life of students by helping them to understand the needs and problems of the students with the purpose of creating, arousing and sustaining their interest in and their understanding of the students’ needs, problems and goals so that the students can be optimally helped to attain their goals, handle these problems and those needs.
• To help route the nation’s human resources into appropriate, useful and beneficial channels thus preventing unnecessary economic wastage.
• Guidance and counselling in schools should help identify and nurture human potentialities in various fields or endeavours thus ensuring adequate manpower development in various sectors of the economy.
• To help build up in individuals positive attitude to fellow Zambians and a sense of total commitment to the unity of Zambia.

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