Influence Of Guidance And Counselling In Career Choice Of Secondary School Students
[EKITI LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF KWARA STATE]

School Counsellor
A school counselor is a counselor and an educator who works in elementary, middle and high schools to provide academic career, college access and personal social competencies to K-12 students. The intervention used includes developmental school counselling curriculum lessons and annual planning for ever student and group and individual counselling.
    Older, dated terms for the profession were guidance counselor or educational counselor but in school counselor is preferred due to professional school counsellors’ advocating for every child’s academic, career and personally/social success m every elementary, middle and high school (ASCA, 2005). In the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Paofic, the terms school counselor, school guidance counselor, and guidance teacher are also used with the traditional emphasis career development countries vary in how a school counselling program and school counselling program services are provided based on economics finding for schools and school counselling programs social capital independent versus public schools and school counselor certification and credentialing movements in education departments, professional associations and national and local legislation.
    The largest accreditation body of counselor Education/school counselling programs is the council for the accreditation of counselling and related Educational programs (CACREP). International Counsellor Education Programs are accredited through a CACREP affiliate, the International Registry of Counselor Education Programs (IRCEP).
    In some countries, school counselling is provided by educational specialists (for example, Botswana, China, Finland, Israel, Malta, Nigeria, Romania, Taiwan, Turkey and United States). In other cases school counselling is provided by classroom teaches who either have such duties added to their physical or typical teaching load or teach only a limited load that also includes school counselling activities (for example India, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Zambia). The IAEVG focuses primarily on career development with some international school counselling articles and conference presentations
    In Nigeria, school counselling begun in 1959 and exists in some high schools. It rarely exists at the elementary school level. Where there are Federally Funded Secondary Schools, there are some professionally trained school counselors. However, in many cases, there are only teachers who function as career masters/mistresses, school counselors often have teaching and other responsibilities that take time away from their school counselling tasks. The Counselling Association of Nigeria (ASSON) was formed in 1976 to promote the profession, but there is not yet a code of ethics. However, a certification/licensure board has been formed Aluede, Adomeh, and Afen-Akpaida (2004) discussed the over reliance on text books from the USA and the need for school counselors in Nigeria to take a whole-school approach and lesson the focus on individual approaches and honour the traditional African world view that value the family and community’s roles in decision-making as a paramount for effective decision making in schools.
Roles of Counsellors in Career Development
A survey by Modern Machine Shop (MMS) (2002) investigated the challenges facing career guidance among high school students surveyed (51 percent) could not identify someone in high school who has been a mentor especially helpful in advising them on career or job options. The vast majority (78 percent) credited their parents as their top adult influence, but the amount of time spent discussing careers was minimal (3 hours or less in the past few months) even at home. Therefore, the study concluded that high school students are making critical decisions about their career paths in a vacuum, unaware of the broad array of educational and employment opportunities available to them.
Kiran (2008) conducted a study on, guidance and counselling with regard to Vidyalaya Guidance Committee. The study aimed to focus on guidance and counselling as a process of education that starts from the birth of the child. Among the key establishments of the study were the fact that guidance is a process of dynamic interpersonal relationship designed to influence the attitude and subsequent behaviour of the person and counselling entails advice-giving and psychoanalysis procedures. Guidance and counselling were found to go hand in hand to facilitate the process of dynamic interpersonal relationship designed to influence the attitude and subsequent behaviour of the person.
A study by Gysbers et.al (2000) intended to determine the major trends, Issues and controversies in guidance and counselling. The main aspects determined were namely, professional title some professional in the field prefer to be called guidance counselor, while an increasing number prefer the term school counselor; Evaluation: A major trend in education is the demand for accountability and evaluation school counselors have not been immune to this demand; school violence school violence can range from bullying to gunfire. Counselors have training to assist teachers and students in cases of violence and to establish violence prevention programs. Terrorism: Terrorism is becoming an increasingly difficult problem in the world of the early twenty first century counselors are able to ascertain the extent to which a student or teacher may be adversely affected by terrorist acts.