Essential Counselling Skills Needed For Helping Under-Achieve Succeed Among Secondary School Students

Abstract

The study is carried out in Anambra state. The researchers adopted descriptive survey design for this study. A sample size of 147 Counsellors who are willing to participate in the study is drawn through accidental sampling techniques from the areas of their meetings. A four rated scale of strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed and strongly disagreed questionnaire developed by the researchers on Essential Counselling Skills Needed for Helping Under-achieve Succeed Among secondary school Students in Anambra State (QOECSSNFHUASSASSSIAS) is used for data collection. Test retest is used to establish the reliability coefficient of the instrument and the value is 0.80 which the researchers considered to be high enough for the study. On the spot administration of the instrument is adopted by the researchers to ensure a hundred percent return. The data collected is analyzed using the weighted arithmetic mean and ranking. The cutoff point regarding an item being in existence as in agreed or not agreed is 2.50. Any item that is below 2.50 is regarded as not being in existence and the result is presented in a table. Among other things the result revealed the following as some of the essential skills needed by professional counsellors for helping the under-achieved succeed in secondary schools: Communicating, tolerance, compassionate, Listening, note taking, empathic understanding, non-judgmental and stress management skills. The researchers recommended that Training needs of teacher-counsellors and career masters on counselling skills for helping students achieve their potentials in life for a better result since they also handle some of the students issues needs to be highlighted by the Secondary school Education Commission. And also, government should be funding such trainings so that lack of money will not prevent them from attending.