School-Related Gender Based Violence (SRGBV) and Its Consequences on Secondary School Students: Implications for Counselling

This investigation was directed to find out the causes and consequences of School – Related Gender Based Violence (SRGBV) in Ivo local Government area of Ebonyi State, South East, Nigeria. The researcher formulated two research questions and one hypothesis to guide the investigation. The instrument used to elicit information from the respondents is, “School – Related Gender Based Violence and Consequences among Secondary School Students Questionnaire†(SRGBVACASSSQ). The instrument was made up of 9 items on the causes of School related gender based violence and 11 on the consequences. The instrument had a reliability coefficient of 0.87, language appropriateness, content and facial validity. The purposive sampling technique was used to select 384 respondents that participated in the research. The researcher and two research assistants retrieved 346 copies of the questionnaire from the respondents. The data from the field work were collated by the researcher, the mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the t-test was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The researcher used 2.50 as benchmark to find out if respondents agreed or disagreed with the 20 items in the questionnaire. The research revealed in table one a mean score of 3.04 as an indication that many teachers flog students in schools to demonstrate their power over them (students), a mean of 3.00 in table one shows that when bullies are not frequently punished, they continue to bully others in schools, a mean score of 3.07 in table one revealed that boys beat up girls in the secondary schools to show that men are more powerful than women and a mean score of 3.04 in table one revealed that promise of good grades can make some female students to go into sexual relationship with some male teachers.