Abstract:
A guidance and counselling programme in a school assist students to harmonize their abilities, interests and values and thereby develop their full potential. All this is geared towards improving the self-image of the students and facilitating better achievement in academic performance. This study sought to establish the influence of guidance and counselling programme on academic performance of secondary school students in Bahati division of Nakuru district. This study adopted an ex post facto research design. It targeted all the 1385 Form Four students, 21 teacher counsellors and 21 head teachers of the 21 selected public secondary schools in the study area. A random sample of 196 students, ten teacher counsellors and ten head teachers were selected from the ten schools. Data was collected through administration of questionnaires with the selected respondents. The collected data was then processed and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 11.5 for windows. The study established the following findings: Secondary schools in the study area differed in the number of guidance and counseling services that they had implemented. Teacher counsellors had little training in guidance and counselling. Stakeholders adequately supported guidance and counselling programme in the schools. Students were aware of the role and importance of career counselling in their schools. There was poor academic performance among students. Guidance and counselling programme has a positive impact on the academic performance of students. Based on these study findings, the following recommendations were made: There is need for the teacher counsellors to implement all the services required for a guidance and counselling programme. There is need to improve the level of training of teacher counsellors in guidance and counselling. Teacher counsellors should take advantage of the positive attitude of the students to enhance career counselling in their schools. Guidance and counselling programme should be strengthened in order to improve the academic performance of secondary schools in the area.
