IMPLEMENTATION OF GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING SERVICE TO STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS IN SELANGOR

Guidance and counselling services are important for all students. The comprehensive model, which is the basis for the guidance and counselling services in Malaysian schools, proposes that the services should be extended to every student. This study is aimed at identifying the level of implementation as well as the various hindrances faced in the implementation of both the counselling service and guidance service for students with special needs in secondary schools of Selangor which offer the Special Education Integration Program (Program Pendidikan Khas Integrasi). Thirty-eight heads of the guidance and counselling units responded to the questionnaire. This study found that both the counselling service and the guidance service are implemented at the moderate level, where 57% of the counsellors implement the counselling service and 55.4% of the counsellors implement the guidance service for special needs students. The three major hindrances perceived by the counsellors as hampering wide extension to the special needs students are: the absence of guidelines on how to implement the service; the lack of skills to provide the service to the special needs students; and the lack of knowledge about the special needs students. Implications of the study in terms of the school counsellors training and the need for a guideline on the implementation are discussed.