Counsellors’ Perception of Problems Facing Guidance and Counselling Services in Nigerian Schools

Abstract

The study investigated problems facing Guidance and Counselling services in secondary schools as perceived by the Schools’ Counsellors. The design for the study is descriptive of the survey type.         The population was made of all the practicing Guidance Counsellors in Nasarawa state secondary schools .All the participatory School Counselors in an annual congress held at the state capital constituted the sample for the study. In all 100 Counsellors were used for the study. A researcher designed questionnaire titled “Counsellor’s problems Perception Inventory” , validated for face and content with reliability coefficient of  0.74 by test-retest method was used to collect information from the respondents. Two hypotheses were raised at 0.05 level of significace. Result  showed that the problems perceived by  Counsellors were  in the following order of intensity as follows; wrong idea of counselling by Principals and other members of staff, assigning counselors to duties other than counselling, lack of counselling office, lack of fund to purchase materials for counselling and non-exposure to in service training . There was no gender difference in counsellors’ perception of problems facing the practice of counselling in the state. There was no significant difference in the perception of counselors’ problems in schools based on Counsellors’ years of experience. It was recommended that counselling should be a full-time job for Counsellors and they should be exposed to workshops and seminars.