A preliminary investigation of high-school counseling resources on the Cape Peninsula

In South Africa, counseling and guidance services remain marginalized. The aim of this study was to determine the structure and function of the counseling facilities in high schools on the Cape Peninsula. The first telephone survey comprising 68 representatively and randomly selected schools revealed that 26% of schools had no guidance department, and the mean full-time guidance teacher-pupil ratio was 1:897. The second survey involving 33 randomly selected full-time and part-time guidance teachers from the first sample showed that they could assign on average 14.4 minutes of counselling per pupil in one school year. Analysis of the full-time guidance teachers (N = 22) time allocation revealed that 23% of time was allocated to counseling, 32% to guidance, and 45% to formal teaching and administration. These results suggest that the allocation of personnel and time to counselling are deficient. An implication is that adolescents with psychological problems go undetected and therefore untreated.