A SURVEY OF THE ROLE OF VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE COUNSELLORS IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN A DEVELOPING ECONOMY

The study was designed to investigate the role of Vocational Guidance Counsellors in promoting student’s entrepreneurship development in a developing economy. This study focused on secondary schools students in Oredo Local Government area of Edo state, Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study, while purposive sampling technique was used to select eighty senior secondary school students from eight schools with professional Guidance counsellors. The question the study attempted to answer is to ascertain the extent to which school counsellors’ impact on students’ entrepreneurship development through counselling services. A 10-item self-designed instrument titled ‘Counsellor’s role in promoting Entrepreneurship development’ was used for data collection. This instrument was validated by experts in measurement and evaluation and a reliability coefficient value of 0.75 was obtained. Data generated from this study were analysed using frequency count and percentages. The findings of the study revealed that school counsellors were deficient in promoting entrepreneurship development of secondary school students through the following counselling services: orientation and information services and also in the organization of entrepreneurship workshop, excursion and career day programmes. Based on these findings, it was recommended, among others, that, the school Guidance Counsellors should be reoriented to drill into their repertoire of professional orientation, a high dosage of entrepreneurship protocols, knowledge and skills. The school heads should be required to provide support for the school counselling programmes, by education authorities.