Gender Comparison in the Effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling Services in Enhancing Students' Adjustment to School Environment in Boarding Secondary Schools in Kenya

Abstract

School adjustment is the process of coping in a new school environment in order to attain the individual and school's set goals and aspirations. The government, education managers and parents have expressed the need to strengthen school Guidance and Counselling services in order to enhance students' adjustment to the school environment. Public boarding secondary schools are expected to implement Guidance and Counselling policy of the Ministry of Education and help students adjust to secondary school environment. This study investigated the Gender comparison in the effectiveness of Guidance and Counselling services in enhancing students' adjustment to school environment in public boarding secondary schools in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive research survey design. The study target population was 36,671 comprising of 35,659 form 3 students, 506 Form 3 class teachers and 506 teachers in charge of Guidance and Counselling from boarding secondary schools in Kitui, Nyeri and Nairobi counties in Kenya. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to select 756 respondents comprising of 720 Form 3 students, 18 Form 3 class teachers and 18 teachers in charge of Guidance and Counselling from 18 secondary schools for the study. Questionnaires were used to collect data from Form 3 students and their class teachers while an interview schedule was used to collect data from teachers in charge of Guidance and Counseling. Using Spearman Brown Prophesy formula by split half technique reliability coefficient of 0.745, 0.746 and 0.736 were realized for students, class teachers and teachers In charge of Guidance and Counseling respectfully. This was accepted because an alpha value of 0.7 and above is considered suitable for making group inferences that are accurate. The data was analyzed by use of inferential anddescriptive statistics with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0 for windows and presented in frequency distribution Tables and percentages. The findings of this study provide information to school administrators, policy makers, parents and other stakeholders on various issues that need to be addressed in Guidance and Counseling to enables students adjust to school environment. The study further suggest ways of ways of improving Guidance and Counselling services in order to make it more effective in public boarding secondary schools.