Factors Influencing Students Access To Guidance And Counseling Services In Secondary Schools In Central division, Machakos District Kenya.

The main focus of this study was to examine the factors influencing students’ access to guidance and counseling services provided in secondary schools, private and public in Central Division Machakos District. The youth in secondary schools face a lot of problems and challenges as this is the developmental stage which coincides with tremendous changes in the process of growth. The ministry of education has issued guidelines for secondary schools to set up departments to provide guidance and counseling services to students. Within the schools the services are provided by an appointed teacher. However it is not clear to what extent students make use of the available services, hence this study sought to find out what motivated the students to seek the services and their perception of factors influencing their access to these services. The descriptive survey method of research was used. Stratified sampling method was used to randomly select 7 public and 4 private schools from which 20 form three students were randomly selected from each school. The teacher in charge of the guidance and counseling were purposively selected from every school. Questionnaire and interview schedules were employed as data collection instruments. Data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) It was found out that 61 % of the students accessed counseling services in their respective schools. Access was found to be determined by gender of the student and type of school. Subject teachers and parents influenced students to seek counseling services. One of the recommendations was that of lighter curriculum workload be adopted for guidance and counseling services providers in the schools. Keywords; Guidance, counseling, secondary schools, students, Teacher counselor, access.