Counselling teachers want more resources

Nyeri, Kenya: Guidance and counselling teachers from Central Kenya want the Government to adequately equip their departments to enable them to fully satisfy the increasing demand for their services.

Speaking in Nyeri County yesterday, the more than 100 teachers attending a counselling training seminar sponsored by Moran Publishers and Happy Science Organisation said they are faced with many challenges in counselling since the abolition of corporal punishment in schools.

Robert Nderu, one of the teachers who attended the session, said teachers are overburdened with the double duty of teaching various subjects in the curriculum and counselling many students at once.

Tight schedule

“Most teachers are also handling other subjects and since corporal punishment is no longer applied in schools, all discipline cases are handled by the counselling departments, which is a very big concern to us,” Mr Nderu said.

The teachers further noted that since tuition was done away with, they are forced to run ‘crash lessons’ to cover the syllabus on time.

“As counselling teachers, we need to give each child individual attention according to his/her needs, but we have very little time to offer guidance because, teachers and students are using up all free time to cover the syllabus,” he said.

He said there are very few training opportunities for counselling teachers and the resources available to the departments are minimal.

“We would like all stakeholders to recognise the role of the counselling departments in schools,” he said.