Guidance and counseling service in schools underutilised

In recent times, the issues of mental health challenges and moral decadence have created significant obstacles for students in basic and secondary education. Many students are experiencing various challenges that affect their behaviour and performance in school. Some have been forced to drop out due to emotional, physical, or mental challenges arising from family backgrounds […]

In recent times, the issues of mental health challenges and moral decadence have created significant obstacles for students in basic and secondary education.

Many students are experiencing various challenges that affect their behaviour and performance in school. Some have been forced to drop out due to emotional, physical, or mental challenges arising from family backgrounds or involvement in detrimental activities such as drug abuse, rape, teenage pregnancy, failure to pay fees, and cultism.

These negative activities are now very common as students are exposed to numerous influences through technology. The students who should be redirected through Guidance and Counseling (G&C) often avoid counsellors for fear of victimisation or due to the attitude of the teachers responsible for counselling. Despite the National Policy on Education providing G&C as a mandatory learning service, the process aims to help individuals discover and develop their educational, vocational, and psychological potential to achieve optimal personal happiness and social usefulness.

Do students consult counsellors in schools? In schools, trained counsellors are available to assist students whenever they are troubled, confused, or need to make informed decisions. However, many students shy away from counsellors and suffer from depression, anxiety, and make poor choices, often resulting in withdrawal from school.

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A student, Opeyemi Friday, spoke to Daily Trust, sharing her experience of having to stay home for two weeks because her parents could not pay her fees, which led to frustration and depression. She said, “I was asked not to come until I paid my fees, and I had to follow my parents to the market. It was more painful when I saw my mates coming back from school. When I eventually returned, I felt lost, especially when I sensed teachers picking on me to ask what they had taught before, and it took a while before I regained myself.”

When asked if she sought help from the Guidance and Counselling department, she responded, “I can never go to the school counsellor because she is mean and always shouting at the students. She is one of the teachers that students don’t like approaching because of her behaviour. She talks down to students, especially girls.” Opeyemi mentioned that she only participates in career talks or other school programmes.

Another student, Felix Udor, noted that many students face various challenges but avoid approaching teachers for counselling due to fear of ridicule. He stated, “In fact, our teacher will use you as an example in class to make other students laugh at you. That’s why many of us do not consult them. We find ways to deal with it on our own.”

While counselling is crucial in education, many students fail to embrace it even when they need it the most. Award-winning teacher Oluwabunmi Anani observed that students shy away from G&C because counsellors often appear different from what students expect. “Today’s children are influenced first by what they see, before they bother to listen to what you know. They love dynamic personalities, those who understand trends and speak the Gen Z language, and they want to see innovation and creativity,” Oluwabunmi said.

She added that students seek empathetic counsellors rather than those who adopt a ‘holier than thou’ attitude. “Today’s youth want to see a counsellor who is genuine, available, empathetic, creative, and innovative, in tune with the times, accessible, reachable, and confidential. Once they find someone with these qualities, they will approach the counsellor,” she said.

Ayah Charity Okwoli, a school counsellor in Abuja, stated that many students avoid counsellors who do not proactively engage with them. “They do not see the reason to visit a counsellor because they perceive you as just another teacher. Every student is supposed to have access to a counsellor, but the major challenge is the student population in secondary schools. In my school, we have just two counsellors for over 3,000 students, making it difficult for all students to access counselling services. We take counselling to the classroom and create programmes that attract students to us,” she explained.

Challenges of implementing guidance and counselling in schools

Despite the importance of G&C in training learners, its full implementation has faced challenges. Anani, the 2022 Maltina Teacher of the Year, stated that excessive workloads hinder the effectiveness of G&C officers. “In most public and private schools, the counsellor is also a full-time teacher with a full workload. How can they focus fully on their counselling duties?” she asked.

To be effective, G&C officers require comfortable offices where students feel safe, along with resources such as books and digital gadgets to engage students. She noted that many counsellors lack the necessary training to handle confidentiality and professional comportment. “Some are blunt with their words, creating an atmosphere of distrust. Do counsellors really create one-on-one time with their students? When sessions are hurried, postponed, or cancelled, students will lose confidence in the system,” she said.

Okwoli pointed out that G&C is effective in FCT schools due to the presence of experienced counsellors. “In the FCT, implementation is supervised by the secondary education board to ensure that counselling activities are carried out in schools,” she said.

Addressing vices among students

Experts have noted that effective G&C can address social vices in schools. Counsellor Okwoli remarked, “Certain conditions push these children into vices they would not ordinarily pursue. We create an enabling environment in schools and organise activities to help students withdraw from such activities.”

“There are some students who are bullies because they have issues from home; they see bullying, fighting, and violence at home, so when they come to school, they practise it. We create an enabling environment for students to begin to learn how to love one another.

“Sometimes I have a case of a child who is not able to pay the school fees, and in government schools, they often say, ‘If you have not paid your school fees, don’t come to school tomorrow,’ or they check the classrooms and send students home.

“Now, there’s something I created: I look for opportunities from NGOs willing to pay for indigent students or those who cannot pay their school fees. When the students see such opportunities, they begin to learn what it means to be loved, which helps to curb some of these vices. As counsellors, we are expected to do more than just speak with students or tell them what they already know; we must also help them find solutions to their problems, and then all these vices will naturally reduce.”

For Anani, with the rise in truancy, substance abuse, immorality, examination malpractice, and the like, one would begin to question the imperativeness of the Guidance and Counselling office. She said: “The biggest problem is engagement. What engaging strategies are employed to enlighten our students? What kind of orientation model is used to instill values in the young ones? What about time and availability? To what extent would our counsellors go to engage, interact, instill, and relate closely with them? What about creativity? It takes a creative person to truly reach into the core of today’s youth.

“Unless our Guidance and Counselling officers re-create their strategies, they would keep speaking an incomprehensible language to the youths.”

Meanwhile, the National President of the Association of Professional Counsellors in Nigeria (APROCON), Prof. Ekundayo Ocholi, said at an event organised by the National Senior Secondary Education Commission in Abuja that there is a need to devise new methods of dealing with social vices in the country, especially in secondary schools. Ocholi noted that social vices are deeply entrenched at the senior secondary levels, and when trying to combat one, another emerges.

She stated that schedule officers in counselling and gender violence are needed to help fight this menace in schools. “We are here to give the schedule officers another orientation, changing the orientation they had before to combat social vices in our schools, especially the quick-money syndrome popularly called ‘yahoo-yahoo.’

“This is making our youths engage in different vices that were not present before. There is a need for retraining these individuals on new methods of handling students to repair this country,” she said.