The influence of guidance and counseling in addressing selected home challenges of students in public day secondary schools in Trans-Nzoia County, Kenya

Abstract

Guidance and counseling aims at assisting individuals in various aspects of life. In Kenya, the Ministry of Education established guidance and counseling services to deal with formal areas of counseling which include educational counseling and psychological counseling in which home challenges of students in both day and boarding secondary schools can be addressed. The purpose of this study was to find out the influence of guidance and counseling in addressing home challenges faced by students who are day scholars in Trans-Nzoia County. Majority of the schools in the county are day secondary schools and students face various challenges at home which include travelling long distances to and from school, accommodation, interference by friends, a lot of home chores assigned to them after school among others. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The target population was 720 teachers and 11290 students from 132 day secondary schools in Trans Nzoia County. Purposive sampling method was used to select a sample of eight day secondary schools from which 386 students and 34 teachers were randomly selected from the selected schools. Out of the 34 teachers, a teacher counselor from the sampled schools was included in the sample of teachers. The data was collected using two questionnaires, one for the student and the other for the teachers. Interview schedule for teacher counselors was carried out. A Pilot study was conducted in West-Pokot County in Kapenguria involving 10 teachers and 40 students from two day Secondary schools and a reliability of 0.72 was established and accepted. The data collected was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer program. Descriptive statistics (averages, percentages, frequencies) was used to analyse the data. The study found out that guidance and counseling is offered in the day secondary schools but counselors are not trained and the students face home related challenges. It was concluded that guiding and counseling is offered in the schools but most teachers have no training in counseling and that students face home challenges which cut across gender and classes equally. The study recommended that education stakeholders offer more support to the department of guiding and counseling by training more counselors and creating more awareness of the home related challenges so that the students can be helped.