Assessment of service delivery in guidance and counselling units in selected secondary school in Eldoret municipality, Kenya

Abstract

This paper assess the type of services delivered by the existing Guidance and Counselling units in secondary schools in Kenya based on a survey conducted in Eldoret Municipality in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The study adopted an ex-post facto research design the target population being all secondary schools in the Municipality where a sample was obtained by both random and stratified sampling techniques. A total of 204 secondary school students (103 girls and 101 boys), from nine secondary schools, 41 teachers (14 male and 27 female) and the officer in Charge of Guidance and Counselling in the District constituted the sample. All categories of schools were considered, that is, boarding and day; single sex and co-educational; public and private. The research instruments for the study involved the use of structured questionnaires (open- and closed-ended). The data were subjected to descriptive and inferential statistical techniques for analysis and interpretation. The findings were described in the form of frequencies, percentages, means, variances and standard deviations. Chi-Square was use to test the hypotheses, where results were accepted as significant at P ~ 0.05. From the results, the services delivered within these units were varied. Physical and human resources were also not welldistributed in all schools. The type of school did not have an influence on services delivered. Both private and public were not aware of the MOEST guidelines on the provision of Guidance and Counseling services. Each school had its own guidelines on service delivery, though they were almost similar. It is thus recommended that more teachers should also be trained in Guidance and Counselling and more than one posted per school. In addition, teachers in charge of Guidance and Counselling should be relieved of their teaching duties or their teaching loads reduced so that they devote more time to the service.