The Kenya School of Revenue Administration (KESRA) has adopted a comprehensive school guidance and counselling program. The program will provide a solid framework for ensuring that students are well-prepared to meet the academic, social, emotional and career challenges.
The program will support students in meeting academic standards, provide them with a safe and secure environment for learning, reduce dangerous and counterproductive risk-taking behaviours, and enhance their resilience.
The program, which complies with state guidelines and curriculum frameworks, will enable students to acquire personal skills to reach their highest educational potential. Students will now have the ability to successfully manage their lives as healthy, responsible, competent, and productive citizens who respect themselves and others.
A comprehensive school counselling program is an integral component of the total education experience, providing the educational opportunities for intellectual development, effective communication, personal growth, and social responsibility. The school counsellors will work in partnership with students, staff, parents, community members, and employers.
All KESRA students will also have access to a full-time certified counsellor and have a right to participate in the school counselling program. The psychotherapy program is intentionally designed to be developmental and contains activities that are organized and implemented by certified counsellors, lecturers and administrators, and other staff in collaboration with students and parents/guardians.
The program will focus on meeting the student’s needs in four domains; academic, career, mental/ psychological, social/personal domains. The developmental aspect of the school counselling program focuses on attaining results related to skills acquisition, while the remedial aspect of the program ensures the provision of services that respond to the immediate needs and concerns of students.
A significant part of a school counsellor’s job is advocating for students. Advocacy includes enhancing relationships between students and lecturers, especially when a student has had a difficult start to the school year or is struggling to interact positively with a lecturer. Once a relationship is developed between student and counsellor, the counsellor can help lecturers to understand the situation of the student and offer suggestions to promote the students’ success and interest in school. The counsellor can also act as a mediator when issues arise between a student and a lecturer.
The global pandemic has also influenced the mental health of many Kenyans and students are no exemption. Changes in ways of learning, low employment rate, Covid-19 restrictions and trauma that may be caused by direct or indirect infection are some of the many incidences that have affected their stability.
With Mental health being an area of massive concern amongst the Kenyan youth, the newly adopted psychotherapy program, will endow KESRA students with the necessary skills that will help them to approach and cope with mental health challenges such as depression and suicide, anxiety disorders schizophrenia and alcohol and substance abuse. This will in turn lead to the production of wholesome students and better fulfilment of the Institutions values.
By Maryanne Ngugi
KRA Human Resources
Sources;
Archer, J. (1994). Achievement goals as a measure of motivation in university students. Contemporary Educational Psychology
Brackney, B. E. & Karabenick, S. A. (1995). Psychopathology and academic performance: The role of motivation andlearning strategies. Journal of Counseling Psychology
Zimmerman, B. J. (2000). Self-efficacy: An essential motive to learn. Contemporary Educational Psychology
HEALTHCARE 05/08/2021
