Bolster counselling to rein in school unrest

There has been a lot happening in schools since they reopened on January 4 after a nine-month break occasioned by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

First, there were incidences of learners missing school, then the revelation that the general performance in the first examination after schools re-opened was dismal, with most learners hardly obtaining average marks. This was expected because memory is a function of time.

The other revelation was the girl-child pregnancies in alarming numbers, not forgetting the violence displayed by some learners against school staff or their teachers. 

The current alarm of cases of arson, which are unexpected, but precedented, with similar cases reported in 2008 and 2016. Lately, media reports indicate over ten reported arson cases in schools across the country, with five of them already closed.

I do not envy school principals at this time when such unpredictable heinous attacks happen at random, as if it is an act of fate, because none has reportedly been forestalled. These cases seem to escalate late in the evenings when the students have gone for evening preps, or when in class as reported in the case of the Kisumu Boys 11am incident. 

The timing appears strategic to damage property and not people. This trend is a cause for alarm, not only for the affected schools, but for society in general. While these appear to be acts of arson, whatever the motivation, these heinous attacks deserve the strongest condemnation possible.

Yet, the concern should generate a critical and holistic approach to school unrest founded on a bioecological system approach to discern the problem. This approach is premised on interrelatedness of social systems.

Sick schooling system

Often, schools are symptomatic of the society, and there is need for stakeholders to look beyond the school fence, or what is often considered as failed parenting. A sick schooling system reflects a sick society. The root causes should go beyond the prosaic comments we hear on social or mainstream media, often directed at learners or their parents.

Granted, learners might be the culprits, but schools exist in a larger ecosystem, with various stakeholders. These include the education ministry, curriculum designers, the Teachers Service Commission, and other government agencies, such as National Intelligence Service (NIS), county administration and organisations like the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Nacada), whose mandate is on matters drug abuse. 

Each of these organs, and others, have a stake in a functioning school system. Holistically, as institutions, schools might need the synergy from most ministries to function effectively, whether directly or indirectly. Ultimately, the efforts from parents should be bolstered by a working social system.

While parenting plays an extremely critical role in childcare, society too has its role, considering that role models impact learners in different ways psychologically, even without physical contact.

Let us consider the case of arson in the context of the quality of guidance and counselling in schools. Various factors have been attributed to arson attacks in schools, or student unrest in general, often focusing on the learners rather than on the school which exists in a societal ecosystem.

For behavioural problems affecting learners in schools in the past, there were recommendations, including from systematic studies, to have functional guidance and counselling units in schools.

While concise steps were taken through a policy directive to focus on the training of guidance and counselling teachers and safety of dormitory structures. The physical redesign of dormitories was triggered after the historic Bombolulu and St Kizito infamous arson attacks and rape cases where students lost lives, as the moment marked a turning point in school safety.

Guidance and counselling 

The shift in policy to train guidance and counselling teachers to work in schools, initially received enormous interest from the teacher-trainees because of the related incentives, including immediate employment upon graduation, availability of paid study leave, among other incentives.

This policy resulted in the discipline of school counselling courses in universities and as a practice in schools. These efforts to train guidance and counselling teachers have been ongoing, although the incentives ended, probably with an assumption that the market became saturated.

However, it is not clear whether all schools have these officers, and whether those trained are adequate to for all schools across the country. My hunch tells me they are not. Moreover, it is not clear also whether these teachers are updated on the challenges of the modern learners, in the absence of appraisal or ongoing training. In schools which have guidance and counselling units, five key challenges face them.

First, is the place of counselling in the schooling process. The guidance and counselling department is often treated as peripheral to the core curriculum, with little time, and other resources allocated to its activities.

Further, in schools where the units exist, the place of guidance and counselling is yet to be centred as core to the learning process, and a functioning school system, because of the limited or missing physical and curriculum space it is allocated. Learners with counselling challenges are counselled outside the learning hours, such as tea-break, lunch break or games time. 

The teachers in some of these schools still teach a full load and hence become exhausted with the mainstream curriculum functions, delivery, and assessment, with little time for their counselling roles, which become peripheral. In a functioning system, specific counselling schedules should be included in the school timetable.

Second, is the lack of adequate resources and infrastructure for school counselling services. The counselling units have few infrastructures, often lacking both office and counselling clinics. 

Inadequate human resource 

In many instances, counselling takes place in odd spaces such as in the laboratory, Deputy Principal’s offices, games stores, or even under trees out in the open field! The physical space is often dilapidated if it exists, yet the counselling space is like a tooth clinic, which ought to be pristine, safe, secure, and private.

A counselling room in an ideal functional environment, is a space for healing, is reserved and well-maintained. The unavailable space is problematic because it denies the much-needed privacy as core to effective counselling.

The third challenge relates to inadequate human resources required for counselling, which is often an emotionally draining process. 

The Teachers Service Commission (TSC) primarily posts teachers for curriculum implementation, and any counselling duties are peripheral to the teaching load.

Fourth, the conflicting roles of teacher and counsellor come to the fore to counter effective counselling. Apart from the emotional drain from the counselling process, a teacher’s routine sometimes need to sanction or punish a learner for misbehaviour.

In instances where the teacher and student both previously interacted in a counselling session, the learner undergoing punishment would feel betrayed in the process.

Unlike the teaching role, a guidance and counselling teacher is trained to be empathetic and caring, characteristics which contrast the role of admonishing and punishing.

Long-term solutions

Fifth and final, learners in schools have connected counselling in schools to sickness. Nay, mental illness. This is a stigma tagged with counselling units. At one time, a parent asked his son who was struggling with a subject area, whether he had sought counselling on study strategies. The response was baffling. “I do not have HIV/Aids”, the son retorted to the parent!

With such stigma attached to the counselling services, it is little wonder that anecdotal findings reveal little use of the school counselling services where they exist. There is need to detach guidance from counselling because each of these serves different purposes.

While the problem of arson has brought to the fore a serious issue in our schools, this should provide the opportunity to reflect on the past to enlighten the present and the future. If we are to get to the triggers of these attacks and all problems bedevilling our school system, there ought to be concerted efforts towards both short-term and long-term solutions.

Recommendations from past task forces might provide a tip of the iceberg, but cautious to consider the dynamism brought by the use of technology. A reboot of sorts is needed on beliefs, and a total paradigm shift to enhance our school functioning. For example, one still wonders why learners in Kenya are not allowed to carry mobile devices to school, including the use of the mobile phone, yet we are preparing learners for a technologically oriented life.

In fact, the irony is that these learners have mobile phones which they leave with their parents when they go to school. If these suspects in the arson cases were learners who used the mobile devices, it would be easy to track and trace their conversations, including those that planned the arson.

Poor parenting skills

Whether stakeholders will shift their paradigm to embrace renewed thinking about forestalling challenges in schools using technology is still a matter of conjecture. 

Fingers have been pointed at poor parenting skills, dysfunctional school systems, heavy curriculum, examination-related stress and drug and substance abuse.

And yet, there are systems in place from which solutions can be sought to address all these issues using functional guidance and counselling units through concerted efforts by the parent ministry and Teachers Service Commission, and Nacada for aspects related to drug abuse as possible causes.

Poor parenting can be addressed through school-parent engagement sessions through parents associations. These relationships should be structured to forestall surprises of school unrest.

Already from the past, some lessons can be drawn, symptoms identified, and unrest predicted. Beyond rhetoric, these heinous crimes, with potential deleterious effects, need the attention of all the education sector stakeholders to seriously engage.

When the synergistic efforts converge, solutions to problems facing learners in schools will be addressed for posterity.

Prof Rose Ruto-Korir is an associate professor of educational psychology, the Director, Institute of Open and Distance Learning at Moi University and the chairperson of the Commonwealth Open Schooling Association, Africa chapter. [email protected]