Effects of counselling programme on senior secondary students’ academic performance in Mathematics in Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

The secondary school system of education in Nigeria assumes the role of training and producing students for tertiary institutions and  manpower for national development and world of work. The general poor academic performance of students in Mathematics has become a source of great concern to all the stakeholders in education particularly the counsellors, educationists, parents and the  government. It is believed however, that proper counselling could improve students’ academic performance. The study therefore, examined the effects of guidance and counselling programme on senior secondary students’ academic performance in mathematics in  Lagos, Nigeria. The researcher adopted a quasi-experimental research design and used simple random sampling technique to select two  senior secondary schools for the study. A total of 73 students (32 experimental and 1 control groups) were involved in the study. The  experimental group was exposed to counseling session before and during the teaching of mathematics for a period of three weeks while  the control group was not exposed to counselling session. Mathematics Performance Test (MPT) was used for data collection on  students’ academic performance. The findings of the study revealed that provision of counselling services has a significant positive effect  on the academic performance of the students in mathematics; counselling service were beneficial to students irrespective of their gender and scoring ability. It was recommended among others that government should provide counseling services to secondary school  students and Mathematics teachers should refer students to counselors for professional services.