In a well-organized educational institution, there must be laid down principles that must be put in place to introduce or welcome new students into the new environment in which they find themselves.
This is because; students are from different backgrounds and they have different views and the rumors they might have heard about the institution they are moving to.
Others too may find some school activities as a religious “Bound activities”, For instance; eating with the left hand during the use of fork and knife in the dining hall.
Most students may see this as evil and therefore needs to be well educated through proper orientation in other to befit into the new school system.
Also, Students may not know about the importance of the library to their program of study, where to find help during crisis, locating school facilities and opportunities available to them.
In other to clear our thoughts, some teachers where interviewed from different schools, in which they all gave different views about the importance of Orientation as a guidance and counselling service that should be rendered to students either new or old.
According to Sir Zaya OF Tanoso D/A Primary School
In his view, orientation is important in the school system because it introduce pupils or students into a new environment or place. It also helps the students to adjust to the system of the school.
For example, AMES (Association of Mathematics Students) orients its members to know the vision, mission, beliefs, and history of the association and probably what they are expected to do. He elaborated one benefit of orientation and says, It is important because without it many students may do things wayward.
Example, students are supposed to bring their students identification cards (ID) for inspection during exams, or else they will not be allowed to write their exam. Proper orientation for the students will make each and every student remember to bring their IDs to avoid been sacked from the exam hall.
According to Sir Johnson Segezi of Raphael International school, Kumasi
To him, orientation is mostly given to people in a new place or environment to help them adjust themselves and also know the dos and dons of the place.
For example, because the system of secondary school is different from that of the tertiary schools, in secondary schools you write what you are taught from your textbook but for tertiary you explain base on your understanding of the points giving.
This proves that students coming from secondary school needs to be oriented in order not to repeat their mistakes from the secondary schools.
He also highlighted on a challenge that confront them during orientation. In his view, some people think orientation is a waste of time but he does not think so, and because the way people feel about it they usually end up not observing it properly and this does not affect they the orienters but the ones they are orienting.
For example, there may be a situation where poor oriented students may pay their school fees in a bank that is not authorized for fee payment. He also said that his school has benefited to orientation programme.
Because with it many of their student will not have gotten the opportunities they have gotten today and even some of the teacher most especially himself have also benefited from in the sense that, when he was posted first, if not the orientation he had from the headmaster and his circuit supervisor, he will have been in troubles with some small problems, he was facing.
ACCORDING TO MR. ALBERT ARTHUR BOMPEH JHS
Orientation service in education is like a training given to students and workers in an institution or the academic fraternity. He also believes that, Orientation in order words serves as a guide for other people to attain their goals. He was asked if orientation waste time but he said in his view, it does not.
It helps pupil and workers in the educational institution to know what is required of them. Because of the orientation that has been organized for the students or workers, they will know what at the end of day is required of them and the target they are supposed to achieve.
When this people are not given this orientation program, they may not know what is required of them, this may lead to some problems in the institution because they may not be aware of what they are supposed to achieve.
For instance, When the electrical department employs someone to be an electrical laboratory assistance and maybe this person is good but not used to modern tool and equipment because, he has maybe not used them before, such a person when he is not given an orientation on the work and the use of the modern tools and equipment.
He is likely to destroy the tools and equipment or cause harm to himself, this person when he is oriented on how to use the modern tools, he may become expert because of the orientation that was given to him on the tools and equipment and he may even avoid damages to the tools and even to himself.
In this because orientation has gone a long way to help such a person to know to use the tools in the laboratory.
It may waste time in the sense that because of the orientation programme at that particular day, there will not be classroom work. e.g maybe the academic calendar of an institution is maybe 12 weeks for classroom but a week of that can be used for orientation of which that week could be used for teaching and learning activity.
He also believes that its nature will depend on the number of the people been oriented.
It is sometimes very difficult for people to adjust to what they are been oriented on, for instance; in the case of a person who comes from a village and the things done there is different from what is done in the towns and cities.
it become difficult for this person to adjust to it, and even if he adjust to it, this may take a longer time him, the same way a person from the same village when move to a town, may adjust to the new things very fast then the other, because of the different level of understanding.
For instance, If Kofi is from village in the western region and have not seen modern tools in a laboratory and even have known access to even some common tools, if this person move to a big institution in the town or city to further his and education and offers electrical technology, when he is been told to use the AutoCAD application to draw, to save time he will prefer to use a drawing board, which is time consuming and tedious in using it.
It may take a longer time for this person to adjust to use the modern application for drawing his drawing, this is important when this person is given an orientation on the use of modern tools like multi-meter, oscilloscopes and applications like multisim, mat lab, proteus and AutoCAD.
MR LAWAL MOHAMMED FROM JACOBS INTERNATIONAL
According to him, generally orientation is a kind of introduction giving to group of people about their environment but in the school system, it is the introduction of students to their program in other to know the foundation of the course. Also orientation helps to know the dos and don’ts and how to use the facilities in the school appropriately.
He gave an example of when he was in training college stating that they were oriented the time to sleep, time to learn, various locations of offices like the staff common room, principal’s office and ways to seek for permission to go home etc.
CHALLENGES OF THE ORIENTATION
During the orientation, some students were not present, some did not even report at time of the orientation.
The time interval set for the orientation was short because of poor preparation towards it by the school authorities. For instance, during the beginning of the term usually there so many activities involved which limits the time for the orientation.
According to Mahama William of Bole D/A Primary School
According to him, orientation helps students to know the dos and don’ts of the school, also the purpose of you being in the school.
For example, when he came to campus, he did not know anything about the courses he was to offer but because of the orientation that was organized for the freshers of which he was part, it gave him some knowledge about the program he was offering.
He added that the orientation also made him know some of the benefits of offering the program and some available opportunities out there.
It also made him aware of how to live friendly with others in the school community.
it is will be better for us to improve on the orientation service in the school system because it is really good to know the environment that you are in to function well in that environment and also in other to avoid getting into unnecessary problem that could have been prevented because of improper orientation or lack of orientation at all.
Orientation is not only important in schools but also in institutions, workplaces and any other place you may find people working.
In some workplaces, lack of proper orientation has because many employees to damage tools and equipment they use for their work and maybe the use of certain areas of the workplace that is restricted to them.
For example, being employed as an electrical engineer in an electrical company and you are not given orientation what to do and what not, I may end up not working effectively and efficiently, or I may not be able to handle some modern tools and may damage them.
With the highlighted points, if this situation should continue in schools then quality education is at risk. Therefore, orientation as a service in the educational system and any other institution must be enforced so that students and workers may feel free in their environment.
Also the department of education should produce human resource that would be in every school and workplace for the purpose of orienting.
The human resource should be trained about the service because this is a type of service that when not done properly, there may be consequences. In doing this we mean they should be committed and focused, only this could help get rid of the challenges confronting this service.