Access to counseling services are very important tools in human development especially during adolescent stage. Adolescent stage is characterized by rapid growth and change: physically, socially, spiritually, morally and intellectually. Most of adolescents are in secondary schools, that is why guidance and counseling services are seriously needed.
Guidance and counseling are the assistances made available by qualified and trained persons to an individual of any age to help him to manage his own life activities, develop his own points of view, make his own decisions and carry his own burden. In addition, the purpose of guidance and counseling in schools is to improve academic achievement, foster positive study attitudes and habits, increase acquisitions and application of conflict resolution skills, and decrease school dropouts.
Lack of access to counseling in adolescence has resulted to increase in unpleasant outcomes in the society. These include school dropouts, drug abuse, crimes, and even failure to secure jobs. The task of educational guidance and counseling is to enable a student to adjust himself to his studies by improving his study attitude and removing subject matter difficulties.
When counseling services are missing in schools, students’ adaptation becomes difficult thus leading to low performance, misbehavior and dropout. Without sound access to guidance and counseling, many students loose direction and engage themselves in bad behaviors such as drug abuse and alcohol indulgence, missing classes, dropout and so on; as a result they lack both focus and direction resulting to total failure in life. In this regard, students need guidance and direction to study and choose career.
In developing countries, access to counseling services are not a new phenomenon. The essence of incorporating guidance and counseling into the school system was to eliminate overwhelming ignorance of many young people on their choices of career prospects and personality maladjustment among school children.
Based on these and more, career officers and counselors were appointed to take the responsibilities in sensitizing students on the needs for effective career choice. Although these were untrained counselors, their efforts brought remarkable development in guidance and counseling that led to organized body of counselors for easy access by the students.
In addition, most youths today engage in occupations not on the basis of reasonable choice but on the basis of fate. Cases of maladaptive behaviors like violation of school rule and regulation, bullying, truancy, drug abuse, alcohol addition, sexual abuse, rape are on the increase among school adolescents. This implies that the access and effectiveness of counseling services have not been embraced or impacted students’ lives properly.
Appraisal services:
Appraisal service is a guidance component designed to collect, Analyze and use a variety of objectives and subjective personal, psychological and social data about pupils to achieve better understanding of the pupils, as well as assist them to understand themselves by using the data.
Counselling services: this is the heart of counseling program. Counseling service constitute 60% activities of the school guidance and counseling program. It is where the clients will come with serious and complicated issues to be discuss in face to face interaction. Counselling is usually regarded as the face to face relationship between a counselor and client(s) with the purpose to help the client understand themselves and their strength and ability to solve their problems.
Information dissemination services:
Is one of the most important guidance service in school as it provide crucial information to the client on academic and nonacademic activities .it also concern with dissemination of information on students, sport and other recreational activities in school.
Orientation services:
Orientation service is the service design to assist individuals to understand and adjust to their new environment. The services to be rendered include: welcoming new students to the school, explaining them rules and regulations of the school, acquainting them with the history, philosophy, status, program, achievements, problems, etc. of the school, exposing them to the school premises and facilities as well as the neighborhood of the school and introducing them to the school management and other staff. Orientation service also provides more light and sensitization lectures and programs in order to create awareness among the newly admitted students.
