Makerere moots compulsory career guidance training for teachers
Mr Ganesh Kohli (centre), the founder of the IC3 Movement, engages Mr Mahmoud Sayani, the chief executive officer of the Aga Khan Schools (left), and Prof Anthony Mugagga Muwaga, the principal of College of Education at the Aga Khan School on March 12, 2024. PHOTO/STEPHEN OTAGE
What you need to know:
- Kohli said counselling and career guidance is important in schools because it addresses issues such as mitigating attention span, impacts on mental health and wellbeing and improves the relationship between schools and parents.
Makerere University School of Education is considering compulsory training in career guidance and counselling for their students.
Prof Anthony Mugagga Muwaga, the principal of College of Education, yesterday said they would make career guidance and counselling an integral part of training their teachers, starting next academic year.
He was addressing representatives from high schools in Kampala, head teachers, their deputies, principals, deans, and career managers and counsellors during the second career guidance and counselling conference organised by the Aga Khan Schools at the Aga Khan School, Old Kampala.
Prof Muwaga said: “Students are facing challenges ranging from social, economic, HIV/AIDS, depression, and psychic challenges, which warrant counselling.”
“Parents and teachers need counsellors who are well-groomed in child counselling, but we do not have these, so we need to skew teacher education to teachers who go beyond academics to give clinical psycho-social help to learners,” he said.
Prof Muwaga said in international schools, the teachers handle manageable classes while in local schools; a single teacher handles more than 100 students in a classroom.
He said it is even worse with stream classes where children can number nearly 700 and it becomes a challenge to provide pyscho-social support to individual students.
Prof Muwaga said beginning next semester; they intend to retool the more than 7,000 student teachers and faculty staff with counselling and career guidance skills to provide child-support in counselling.
Mahmoud Sayani, the chief executive officer of the Aga Khan Schools, said this is the second time since 2016 that they have organised the conference with the IC3 Movement to bring together career and college counselling across the world to help students find their purpose in life.
“The IC3 Movement provides free training to teachers to help students find their skills, and their own pathways in life. This is the wonderful thing about IC3. They learn from skilled facilitators as a lot of schools have only one counsellor guiding 100 students while some schools do not have counsellors,” he said.
He said by turning teachers into counsellors, the initiative is creating a new breed of counsellors that will fill the gap in universities and colleges because today’s education requires students to find ways of becoming useful members of society.
Ganesh Kohli, the founder of the IC3 Movement, said this is the third conference in Africa and they are helping young students receive counselling in school and find their purpose in school.
“Young people around the world are leaving school without a navigation system and they crash. They end up in anger, frustration and sadness; not because they haven’t been taught, only that they haven’t been guided. We want to change this by training teachers to be counsellors to give guidance to the student,” he said.
Kohli said counselling and career guidance is important in schools because it addresses issues such as mitigating attention span, impacts on mental health and wellbeing and improves the relationship between schools and parents.
He said they also impact career choices that students make. He urged schools in Uganda to adopt counselling as a central function rather than a peripheral function in schools.
