PROBLEMS OF MARKETING GUIDANCE AND COUNSELING SERVICES IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Guidance and counseling is an integral part of an ideal educational system. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica defined counseling as the process of helping
an individual discover and develop his educational, vocational and psychological potentialities and thereby achieve an optimal level of personal happiness
and social usefulness.
According to Anamaeze (2002), counselling is a personal relationship between a counsellor and a counselee in which, the counsellor helps the counselee to
learn more satisfying behaviour necessary for solving his problems. Guidance and counseling programmes for secondary school students are designed to
address the physical, emotional, social, vocational and academic diiculties
of adolescent students. Counseling is a form of education which the students
receive from their counselors.
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. This is to complement learning in the classroom and also enhance academic performance/achievements of students.
Guidance and counseling plays a vital role in preventing educational, personal, social, mental, emotional and other similar problems among secondary school students. Ministry of Education and principals of schools are aware of the heavy reliance placed on guidance and counseling services for most aspects of the new 9-3-4 educational system to actually succeed.
These services are presented by Nwachukwu (2007) as information services, placement services, appraisal services, vocational guidance services, counseling
services, referral services, evaluation, follow-up, consultancy and research services.
The importance of guidance and counseling programme in secondary schools cannot be overemphasized because there is a need for the students to have an
increased understanding of the educational, vocational and social information needed to make wise choices. Thus, counseling is imperative in order to correct the anomaly observed in Nigerian secondary schools.
Ifelunni (2003) stated that there are three (3) main areas in which every individual requires counseling. These areas are: vocational counseling, socio personal
counselling and educational counselling. Students can adequately be counselled under these areas. Vocational counselling aims at helping
students match their personal attributes and background with suitable jobs and employment opportunities. Personal socio counselling takes care of
problems of students such as boy-girl relationship, manners and etiquettes, personal appearance, home and family relationship. Education counselling
addresses issues related to students’ academic excellence such as study habit, examination techniques, time management, procrastination, and how to choose subjects.
