The significance of psychological services on public secondary school learners in Luvuvhu Circuit, Thulamela Municipality

Abstract

This research report is aimed at exploring the significance of psychological services on public high school learners at Luvhuvhu Circuit. The main objective of this study was to identify the psychological services offered in public secondary schools and their significance, to identify the interventions in place in the Department of Education in South Africa and to explore the coping strategies used by the learners. This study was motivated by reports of the increase in the failure rate at public secondary schools due to social and psychological problems faced by secondary school learners in public schools. Public universities seem to have the appropriate psychological services in place for students to utilise (Lawrence, 2009), however, this does not seem to be the case for public secondary school learners who are faced with extreme developmental crisis. Therefore, the study seeks to involve stakeholders from the Department of Education in collaboration with the Department of Health to assist in providing adequate psychological services to high school learners. The research is qualitative in nature. It made use of Focus Group Discussions and semi-unstructured interviews. A purposive sampling was applied and a sample of nine focus groups was ideal for the researcher because of the need to gather detailed information on the impact of psychological services offered to public secondary school learners at Luvuvhu Circuit. The sample was drawn from Grade 10 to 12 learners attending nine public secondary schools in the Luvuvhu Cicuit. The collected data were analysed using Thematic Content Analysis. The four themes of the study that emerged were problems experienced by learners at public secondary schools, experiences of learners when seeking for psychological services at their public secondary schools and their effectiveness, experiences of learners regarding interventions from the government aiming or attempting to assist them with their problems and self-applied coping strategies used by learners. The study findings revealed that learners face problems daily and these problems do not only affect their school performance, but also their social relationships. Without the assistance of the DOE in dealing with these problems, learners tend to deal with the problems on their own, employing less effective coping mechanisms to achieve some form of relief from the problems that they experience. Therefore, the involvement of stakeholders from the Department of Education in collaboration with the Department of Health (DOH) is essential to assist in providing adequate psychological services to secondary school learners if problems faced by learners are to be curbed before further damage to their psychological functioning. Schools need a collaboration of professionals that are ready to assist learners with any form of problem for the success of the country.