Effective Guidance and Counselling Programmes in Secondary Schools: Issues and Roles in Students’ Career Decision Making

Abstract

Career decision making is a skill that counsellors can use to assist students learn, it involves conscious, systematic process which students can learn and perform better practice. This study therefore, was designed to examine guidance and counselling programmes in secondary schools: it also determined issues and roles of the programme in students' career decision making. The study adopted an ex-post facto descriptive survey design and covered senior school students in ten selected secondary schools in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Simple random sampling techniques were employed in selecting the sample for the study and utilized 300 respondents; 30 head teachers and 27 students from each of the ten selected schools totalling 270 students. Two different questionnaires were designed for the study data collection which was Senior Secondary School Students Questionnaire (SSSSQ) and Secondary School Teacher Counsellors Questionnaire (SSTCQ). 270 copies of questionnaires were administered to students through the help of research assistants and 180 copies were filled correctly and returned giving a return rate of 90 percent. Also 30 copies of questionnaires were administered to selected teachers and all were filled and returned. However, construct and face validity was established as experts in guidance and counselling validated the instruments. Reliability coefficient of 0.65 was established for the students' instruments (SSSSQ) while the reliability coefficient of 0.67 for the teacher's instrument (SSTCQ). Findings among others revealed that 77.22% of the population proved that there is little or no form of counselling services to assist students in career decision-making in their respective schools while73.33% of the study population felt that counselling resources for teacher counsellors are unavailable and insufficient in their respective schools. Conclusion and recommendations were drawn from the findings made.