Repositioning Senior Secondary Education in Nigeria for Producing Entrepreneurial-Oriented Students

Abstract

This paper brings to the fore a realization of the fact that the performance of the products (outputs) of the education system is an index of the inputs into the system. For the students to have enterprising and innovative mindsets, it is important to expose them early to practical entrepreneurial and vocational skills while in school. This study therefore sought to identify what skills are imparted to the students practically and the teaching/learning exercises used. The research design was descriptive survey. Government Secondary Schools (236) in Rivers State, Nigeria constituted the population. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to get a sample size of 70 (30%) senior secondary schools. The total respondents were 140 made up of 70 principals and 70 vice-principals. Three research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. Data were collected using structured questionnaire. The instrument reliability was established using test re-test method (r-coefficient was 0.82), Mean (X) and standard deviation (SD) were used to answer the research questions and the hypothesis analysed using t-test at 0.05 level of significance. Practically the students were taught some vocational skills like agriculture, technical drawing, food and nutrition. The entrepreneurial skills imparted to them are communication skills, personality skills, and digital literacy skills. It was recommended among other things that the students should be exposed to more practical skills. Students centered teaching/learning exercise need to be used to encourage active participation of the student.