Effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling Services in Enhancing Students’ Adjustment to School Academic Environment in Public Boarding Secondary Schools.

Abstract

School adjustment is the process of coping in a new environment to attain the individual and school’s set goals and aspirations. Stakeholders have expressed the need to strengthen Guidance and Counselling services to enhance students’ adjustment to school environment. Public boarding secondary schools are expected to implement Guidance and Counselling policy of the Ministry of Education. This study investigated the effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling services in enhancing students’ adjustment to school academic environment in public boarding secondary schools in Kenya. It adopted a descriptive research survey design and targeted 36,671 students, comprising 35,659 Form 3 students, 506 Form 3 class teachers, and 506 Guidance and Counseling teachers from boarding secondary schools in Kitui, Nyeri and Nairobi Counties. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 756 respondents, comprising 720 Form 3 students, 18 Form 3 class teachers, and 18 Guidance and Counseling teachers from 18 secondary schools. Questionnaires were used to collect data from Form 3 students and their class teachers, while an interview schedule was used for Guidance and Counseling teachers. Pilot of 76 respondents was done in three public boarding secondary schools in Machakos, Kirinyaga and Thika Counties. Using Spearman Brown Prophesy formula by split half technique, reliability coefficients of 0.745, 0.746 and 0.736 were realized for students, class teachers and Guidance and Counseling teachers, respectively. This was accepted because values over 0.7 are considered suitable for making accurate group inferences. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 17. Guidance and Counseling was effective in helping students adjust to school environment. The issues that need to be addressed in Guidance and Counseling include strengthening individual counseling, training of peer counselors and gender balance in appointment of school counseling personnel to improve services.