Abstract

The responsibility or duty of counselling has been the exclusive right of the elders and counselling services have been in existence as long as human beings have lived. Learning institutions are therefore expected to provide counselling services to their students as part of their educational functionality for the students to reach their full potential in their studies. This study, therefore, sought to examine the influence of counselling services on senior secondary school students' academic performance and interpersonal relationships in education district II of Lagos state. Non-experimental design of descriptive survey type was adopted for the study. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 237 teachers from fifteen schools in the Education District II of Lagos state. Two research questions were answered and four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. A validated instrument titled: Counselling Services and Academic Performance and Interpersonal Relationship Questionnaire (CSAPIPQ; r=0.94) was used. Data obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics of percentage, mean, standard deviation and inferential statistics of ANOVA. The findings revealed that the extent to which counselling services influence senior secondary school students’ academic performance and interpersonal relationships in education district II of Lagos state was high. Besides, these findings were not teachers’ status (F (2,236) =0.69; p=0.51) and (F (2,236) =1, 71; p=0.18) different nor age (F (3,236) =1.91; p=0.13) and (F (3,236) =2.55; p=0.06) specific. Implications to students' academic performance and interpersonal relationships were discussed. It was recommended among others that periodic refresher programmes be organised for the in-service teachers to keep them abreast of the latest counselling strategies.