Examination of students' views on guidance and counselling services in Ghana

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating whether the service schools give on guidance and counselling adequately met students’ needs and, if not, what strategies needed to put in place to improve and make guidance and counselling services in the school more beneficial. Adopting the descriptive research design and mainly questionnaire, the researcher selected 250 respondents from three senior high Schools in the New Juabeng Municipality of the Eastern Region of Ghana using the stratified sampling technique. Data were collected using questionnaire and was analysed using frequencies and percentages. The main findings were that the type of guidance and counselling services respondents wanted most and preferred to be included in the service is counselling, while the least was evaluation. While some of the respondents were in favour of receiving counselling in the evenings and wanted it at the middle of the school term, other chose early in the morning before the assembly and wanted it at the beginning of the term. A majority of the students did not conceive guidance and counselling as having any good impact on students. Finally, the point of the majority view was that problems concerning students should be kept confidential. Also, counselling should be done in a private place and done by a professional counsellor. The study therefore recommends that coordinators should explain and specify the type of counselling available for students to take advantage of them. Guidance coordinators should organise regular seminars for their student to enable them to be more familiar with the purpose of other guidance service available.