Effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling Programme in Combating Drug Abuse in Secondary Schools,A case of Nakuru Municipality,Kenya

Abstract

Drug abuse is one of the major causes of indiscipline among the secondary school students in Kenya. ln a bid to help students develop right attitudes towards discipline. deyelop personal criteria for making informed and ethical decisions and inform on dangers of such antisocial habits as drug abuse and alcoholism. the government has continued to support the establishment and strengthening of guidance and counselling programme in secondary schools. The study drew inspiration from the fact that. eycn with the implementation of guidance and counselling programme in secondary schools many emerging issues of indiscipline haye continued to persist and majority ha\e been attributed to drug abuse. The study's focus was on the effectiveness of guidance and counselling programme in combating drug abuse in secondary schools within Nakuru :\/lunicipality. Descriptive surye) research design was used in this study. The target population \\ as U420 secondary school students and the 35 teacher counsellors in Nakuru Municipality. The accessible population was the 3500 form four students and 35 teacher counsellors. The sample for this study consisted of 180 fonn four students selected from 12 secondary schools through stratified and simple random sampling and 12 teacher counsellors selected through puiposiyc sampling. Data was collected by use of self-scoring questionnaires. The collected data \\ as analyzed by use of percentages. means. frequencies which are descriptiye statistics and chi square iyhich is an inferential statistic. vtith the help of version ll.5 of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The main finding of this study showed that guidance and counselling is effective in combating drug abuse in secondary schools. lt \\as also established that students haye high perception and favourable attitude towards the ability of guidance and counselling in combating drug abuse in secondary schools. Based on the findings. the study recommended that there is need to enhance and strengthen guidance and counselling programme. to make it even more effective in combating drug problems in secondary schools.