Physical Facilities
Are the facilities for guidance work sufficient for an effective program? Physical facilities that are well planned and provide for adequate space, privacy, accessibility, and the like are characteristic of quality guidance program.
Records
Appropriate records are maintained on each student including achievement test score, information supplied by teachers, administrators, parents, employers, and other professional personnel.
Although many of the aforementioned ten characteristics are useful, they should not be accepted unquestioningly. To some extent each guidance program is unique to its particular setting and consequently would either add other characteristics to the list or stress those cited previously in varying degree.
Conclusion
Guidance and counseling services play an integral part in the overall student services department of any elementary or secondary school. The aims of guidance and counseling programs in schools are to assist individuals to develop the ability to understand themselves, to solve their own problems, and to make appropriate adjustments to their environment. Major guidance services include student appraisal, information giving, placement and follow-up, and counseling. Broadly conceived, two methods of counseling include directive and nondirective approaches. On the one hand, directive counseling focusses attention on identifying and analyzing the problem and finding an appropriate solution to it using all available data. Nondirective counseling, on the other hand, provides the counselee not with a neat solution, but instead with the ability to meet her problem in a constructive way. Ten criteria are used in evaluating guidance and counseling program: student needs, cooperation, process and product, balance, stability, flexibility, quality counselors, adequate counselor-student ratio, adequate physical facilities, and appropriate record keeping.