The subject of guidance and counseling has gained great importance in recent years. In many schools well- planned efforts are made to provide assistance to individual boys and girls in deciding upon their future careers and education, and other personal problems. Guidance and counseling helps learners to improve their academic performance.

Guidance and counseling is important in schools and colleges in the following ways:

• Guidance and counseling helps young people to pursue the right type of education. Whenever any learner is confused between two career options, vocational guidance can help to make a choice. In this way, the individual is motivated.

• It assists individuals to make informed decisions about their education. Individuals have to know the choices that are available in subjects, curricula, schools or colleges to determine what exactly they want to pursue. They have to know subject combinations or options, what the subject involves in the classroom, available courses and what are the future prospects of following a particular course, available schools and colleges that offer the desired programmes, admission requirements and educational opportunities.

• It facilitates the smooth transition for children from home to school, from primary to secondary school, from secondary to higher educational institutions and to the world of work. The final transition from the educational system to the labor force appears to be most important and challenging for students.

• It helps students to cope with examination anxiety. The fear of failure and a craving for high grades are major stress factors among students nowadays. Handling this pressure becomes difficult for children. Guidance helps learners to overcome this fear and achieve good marks.

As given in the above scenario, guidance helped Manisha to find the most effective solution to her problem.

• They can be informed about the methods of learning that suits them. They are guided on how to use different methods for improving their academic performance.
  

• It provides students with meaningful educational experiences. Students are able to correlate the curriculum to occupations. The guide needs to give special attention to females as they often find themselves in conflicting situations if they do not follow gender stereotypes in selecting the subjects they study.
  

• Sometimes personal problems of a learner may hinder the learning process. Fights between parents and peer pressure are some of the reasons that hamper learning. Guidance may be provided on how to tackle these situations and concentrate on academics.

• During puberty, learners often tend to get distracted. Peers influence each other greatly at this stage. They may get addicted to bad habits. Guidance and counseling become very important in such situations to bring learners back on to the correct path.