Golden dreams or shattered hopes : social work intervention with 14-year-old students

Abstract

This dissertation tries to identify the most common problems faced by adolescent girls and boys who attend Opportunity Centre, Junior Lyceum and Area Secondary Schools. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to a sample of 128 students (62 boys and 66 girls) attending Form 4 in six different schools. The main areas in the questionnaire were personal development, friends & families, school environment and support at school. Furthermore, the role of school social worker was described in depth. From the results obtained, some problems among adolescents were similar both to boys and girls and irrelevant to the type of school they attend, while others were different. Moreover, problems related to education were experienced differently from low streamed to high streamed adolescents. The presence of school social work in schools would enhance the students' educational achievement.