Status of Guidance and Counselling provision in selected Colleges of Education in Mongu, Zambia

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the status of guidance and counselling in selected Colleges of Education in Mongu District. The objectives of the study were to: establish the status of guidance and counselling in colleges of education, determine the nature of guidance and counselling services available to students in colleges of education and assess factors affecting provision of guidance and counselling services to students in colleges of education. Descriptive survey design was used for the study. The sample size consisted of 126 respondents in the three colleges, comprising of 40 students from each college, a College Counsellor and the Principal from each college. Simple random sampling procedure was used to select students and purposive sampling procedure was used to select college guidance counsellors and Principals. The primary data was collected by the use of questionnaires for students and interview schedules for college guidance counsellors and the principals. The qualitative data was analysed using thematic analysis while quantitative data were analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) computer programme. Qualitative data were organized and presented in common themes while quantitative data were presented in pie charts, tables and graphs.The findings of this study were that: majority of the respondents indicated that guidance and counseling services were available in each college while the rest of the other respondents indicated that ihcy did not know if guidance and counselling existed in their colleges; the services were available on phones in other colleges, but the students seemed to be ignorant about this vital information; some students don't actually know the importance of counseling hence the under-utilizing of these services; educational guidance was the most frequent offered service that mostly focused on academic followed respectively by social, personal and vocational guidance and counselling; the provision of the services faced challenges of: lack of facilities; failure by affected students to open and seek guidance and gender imbalance on service providers. The study recommended that the college management in collaboration with the Ministry of General Education: (i) Put in place a silhouette of guidance and counselling in colleges (ii) train more Lecturers with skills of guidance and counseling, (iii) Set aside a day, at least in a term specifically, for guidance and counseling activities (iv) consider the issue of gender balance when deploying lecturers of guidance and counselling.