Camfed Mentor programme highlights guidance, counselling
The Director of the Guidance and Counselling Unit of the Ghana Education Service, Ms Ivy Mawuena Kumi, has underscored the essence of guidance and counselling as crucial student support service that is aimed at helping individuals to discover and develop their educational, vocational and psychological potentials.
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According to Ms Kumi, guidance and counselling played an integral part in both teaching and learning in schools, stressing that such services “help in the achievement of an optimal level of personal happiness and social usefulness”.
She was speaking at an educational summit organised by the Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) Ghana in Accra.
To effectively meet the needs of all students in Ghanaian schools, Ms Kumi said it was essential that the foundation of guidance services was both systematic in approach and comprehensive in nature.
She added that as students mature and develop, any guidance and counselling programme must keep pace with their social, emotional, behavioural and cognitive changes and relate those changes to educational, career and societal changes.
Camfed teacher tentor programme
Looking at the pivotal role that guidance and counselling plays in the academic and psycho-social development of students, Camfed Ghana, in 2008, established a Teacher Mentor programme, aimed at improving educational access and quality for children by taking a holistic approach to creating a child friendly and gender responsive schools.
The programme complements cash transfers to schools and bursary support packages to children as part of an integrated set of strategies which will reduce the barriers to education for children, particularly those marginalised as a result of family poverty, sex, disability or ethnicity.
As key element of the Camfed model, teacher mentors are in contact with children daily and fulfil a range of functions.
They serve as the focal point for child protection and psychosocial support at school level through their own commitment and initiative.
The role of teacher mentors, according to Camfed Ghana, was critical in ensuring that children received the needed support, be it psychosocial or academic and to ensure they stayed in school and performed well.
In the model, there are two teacher mentors each in 455 primary schools, 332 junior high schools and 73 senior high schools in Camfed’s operational regions of the Upper West, Upper East, Northern and Central regions.
Guidance and counselling
Comprehensive and coordinated student support services, particularly guidance and counselling, are said to be critically important for the social, emotional and character development of students and the development of learning climates that are conducive to student achievement of high academic standards.
Studies have shown that such support services, which included prevention, intervention, transition and follow-up services for students, enhanced the capacity of all students to achieve academic success and personal well being.