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Effectiveness of Basic Education in Equipping

upper basic school final year students in Kwara

State with Employable Skills

By

Dr. OWOLABI, Henry O.

Department of Arts and Social Sciences Education

University of Ilorin, Ilorin

Faculty of Education

[email protected]

08033733311

OLORUNLERO, Jumoke I.




[email protected]

AROKOYO, Oluwatosin A.




[email protected]

08030661249

A Paper Presented at 15th Annual National Conference of Nigerian Association of

Educational Researchers and Evaluators Held Between 8 th - 12th July 2013 t University of

Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria.

Abstract

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Assessing the extent to which upper basic school final year students in rural and

urban areas acquire skills for employment, this study adopts a descriptive research

design. The sample for this study was 60 JS 3 students selected from upper basic

schools in Irepodun and Ilorin South LGA of Kwara State respectively; using the

stratified random sampling technique. A NECO-standardised literacy test was

adopted and a numeracy test standardised by measurement experts were administered

to the selected students to measure the extent to which they are literate and numerate.Also, a life skill checklist equally expert standardized was administered to the selected

students to measure their employment related skills proficiency level. Descriptive

statistics was used in analyzing the collected data in answering the research questions

while t-test comparing means was employed in testing the hypothesis generated for

the study. Findings revealed that students are most proficient (fair to advanced skills)

in literacy, communication and interpersonal skills while they have either no skills or

at best rudimentary skills in numeracy and ICT while the skill proficiency in

numeracy and ICT skills of students in the rural and urban areas was significantly

different except in literacy, communication and interpersonal skill as shown using the

t-test statistics.

Key words: Literacy skills, Numeracy skills, Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT), Communication skills, Interpersonal skills, Upper basic school

final year students and Functional education.

Introduction

Education has remained a social process in capacity building and maintenance

of society for decades. It is a weapon for acquiring skills, relevant knowledge and

habits for surviving in the changing world (Adepoju and Fabiyi, 2005). The concept of

basic education came to the fore following the adoption of the World Declaration on

Education for All (1990). In its Report presented to UNESCO Learning: The

Treasure Within (1996), the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-

first century, stated that Basic education is the first step in attempting to attenuate the

enormous disparities affecting many groups women, the rural and urban, population,

poor, marginalized ethnic minorities and the millions of children not attending schooland working. The concept of basic education has led to broaden the magnitude of the

right to education: extending from basic education to lifelong learning (UNESCO,

2007). Consequently, education is in recent times pointing to making education not

only available and accessible but also functional.

Functional education is seen as education that comes from the childs needs,

and that uses the childs interests as a mechanism for activating him towards his

desirable activities. The purpose of functional education is to develop the life of the

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mind that acts from the wholeness of organic life, with relation to practical life in the

present and in the future. Furthermore, contentions were made that functional

education enables the learner to gain thinking habits and develop the technical means

needed in solving practical problems. The purpose of education if it must hold any

meaning is therefore to acquire the skills of understanding life situations, adapting to it

and acting to influence it by contributing to its development (Obanyan, 2003). The

functional context education says that the situation in which the child is growing, and

the one he is going to live in, should determine the way education is carried out,

including what is taught and how it is to be taught and learned. This is in concert with

the fourth National Education goal which is the acquisition of appropriate skills and

the development of mental, physical and social abilities and competencies as

equipment for the individual to live in and contribute to the development of his society

(Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1998).

Formal education in Nigeria is structured into six years of primary and 3 years

of junior secondary schooling which has been designed to be free and compulsory and

one of its major goals is to ensure the acquisition of appropriate levels of literacy,

numeracy, manipulative communicative and life skills as well as the ethical, moral

and civic values needed for laying a solid foundation for the life-long living. It is

envisaged that education can be terminal at this point could be terminal as students

would have been equipped with what they need for a meaningful livelihood.

Attempts at driving functional education is not limited to Nigeria but also

universal. A retrospective study carried out by Frank, David, and Golden (1999)

reveals that USAID/Zimbabwe began the Basic Education and Skills Training

program (BEST) in 1999, being one of the first attempts to provide non-project

assistance (NPA) on a significant scale to the education sector. The goal of the Basic

Education and Skills Training Sector Assistance Program (BEST) is to contribute to

Zimbabwes economic and social development by providing additional budgetary

resources to assist the government of Zimbabwe to implement its planned program to

expand its educational and employment skills training system with special emphasis

on improving cost-effectiveness and equity within the overall system.

Ombech (2003) reports that as many as 500,000 youths enter the labour market

in Kenya; a great number of them graduates of the 8-year primary education and most

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of them without survival skills. Three reasons were identified to support the

importance of good quality education; there are the core skills provided by basic

education, education can help alleviate negative features of life and education has a

powerful role in empowering those like children and women who suffer from multiple

disadvantages. A Life Skill is a capacity acquired over a period that contributes to

productive co-existence with other members of a community. In response to this

challenge, primary education now attempts to develop life skills through teaching of

curriculum subjects like languages, mathematics, and science, among others.

Development of these skills is closely linked to pedagogy of active learning. Through

participative teaching methods, such as role play, debates, situation analysis, and one-

on-one problem solving, education programs are expected toactively engage school

children in their own acquisition of life skills. Recognising the fact that it is the skills

useable long after schooling that determines whether knowledge was impacted from

schooling; the Kenyan curriculum identifies other emerging lifelong issues like

HIV/AIDS, Adolescent Reproductive Health, Malaria, etc that are to be infused in the

other subjects or taught separately.

In the hope to achieve the required relevance and quality of education, the

Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) of Tanzania adopted a

Competence Based Education and Training (CBET) delivery approach. The approach

is outcome based, giving room for integrating all necessary skills to enable a graduate

perform at a prescribed learning objective.

At macro level, the approach is flexible enough to package learning content to address

different learning objectives such as skills and competences specific for rural

subsistence producers, or for the urban informal sector operators to enable them to

enter gainful economic activity. This is intended to reduce poverty, and give specific

skills, for example, for hotel services or textile workers to enable Tanzania to compete

effectively in the global market. At the individual level, the approach is designed to

maintain formal employment, or otherwise enhance income for a subsistence producer

or open opportunities for the unemployed and informal sector operator.

Education for most of the population in China took place through social

cultivation. Family, community and the whole society played important roles in

educating the masses. The school, as a specialized agency for education, was available

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only for a small number of people and just in recent centuries. Currently, the broad

sense of education includes both formal schooling and the non-formal learning forms.

With the widespread popularity of notions such as lifelong education, education for all

and the learning society, the value of non-formal learning has been reemphasized in

China. From the ability to do reading and writing a certain number of characters,

literacy is now seen as effectiveness of using literacy using the knowledge, skills

and beliefs that literacy learning brings to solve practical problems in everyday living,

to adapt to society and to improve the quality of life. Functional literacy and education

therefore emphasize the all-round development of basic skills and the effective use of

these skills in individual development and societal improvement. The objective of

functional literacy and education is to conduct training for people who will undertake

various social and economic tasks in order to reach the goal of reducing poverty and

improving the quality of life.

In India, education is based on the national culture and civilisation. It aims at

making a child self-reliant by enabling him to use his acquired knowledge and skills in

practical affairs of life. Basic education has close relationship with the basic needs and

interest of the education as the child is the focal point of education. The central point

of education is some handicraft, whose teaching will enable the student to solve the

problems of his livelihood and at the same time develop qualities of good citizenship.

The various initiatives in providing basic education are because the

development and survival of any society is a function of the quality of its human

capacity. The functionality of the Nigerian education system is therefore worthy of

being looked into with a focus on basic education being the bedrock of the formal

education system in the country.

The labour market is the final destination of learners in the various levels of

education; be it primary, secondary or tertiary. How much of the key skills needed in

the world of work learnt from school. Thomas (2005) skills gap report in Washington

D.C. revealed that in addition to shortages of various types of employees,

manufacturers surveyed reported they are also dissatisfied with the skills of their

current employees. Among respondents to this national survey, nearly half indicated

their current employees have inadequate basic employability life skills such asattendance, timeliness and work ethic while 46% reported inadequate problem solving

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skills among employees and 36% indicated insufficient reading, writing and

communications skills. A similar opinion by Moser (1999) holds that an estimate of 7

million people had life skills below rudimentary the level in the UK, and it was

claimed that people with poor literacy, language or numeracy skills are less productive

at work, earn lower wages; are more likely to suffer from ill health and experience

social exclusion. Tackling this skills problem was given a high priority and in 2001

the Government launched its Skills for Life Strategy for improving the nation's skills

in literacy, language and numeracy.

The bane of education in any Nation is therefore to equip her citizens with not

just the book knowledge that characterize education delivery but in addition;

employable skills. Considering the mission of providing basic education in Nigeriabeing that at the end of the nine years of continuous education, every child that has

passed through the system should have acquired appropriate levels of literacy,

numeracy and life skills to make them employable, useful to him/her self and also

society at large by possessing relevant ethical, moral and civic values. The main

purpose of this paper isto therefore to look into:

a. The skills required for employment acquired by upper basic school final year

students in Irepodun and Ilorin South LGA of Kwara State.

b. Identify the strength and weaknesses in skills acquired among upper basic

school final year students

With the above purpose in view, the following research questions are generated for

this study:

i. To what extent do upper basic school final year students in Irepodun andIlorin South LGA of Kwara State acquire skills required for employment?

ii. What is the nature of the distribution of scores in the skills required for

employment demonstrated by upper basic school final year students in

Irepodun and Ilorin South LGA of Kwara State?

To determine the extent to which the answers to these questions can be used in

generalising the entire population, the following hypothesis was formed:

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There is no significant difference in the employment skills acquired by upper basic

school final year students in rural and urban areas.

Methodology

A descriptive survey design was adopting for this study. Employing the use of

stratified sampling technique, 60 junior secondary school students were selected from

a junior secondary school in Irepodun (rural) and another in Ilorin South LGA (Urban)

of Kwara State. A total of 120 students constituted the sample for the study. A NECO-

standardized literacy test and a measurement expert standardized numeracy test was

administered on the students selected from urban and rural areas to evaluate the

proficiency level in literacy and numeracy while a life skill checklist also standardized

by a measurement expert was administered on the students to determine the extent towhich they are proficient in ICT, interpersonal and communication skills using a five

point Likert rating scale as follows; No skill: 0, Rudimentary skill: 1, Fair skill: 2,

Efficient skill: 3, Advanced skill: 4. Each of the skills were graded over a 100 percent.

The instrument was validated for both content and faces validity and its reliability was

obtained through a test-retest method. A reliability coefficient of 0.87 was obtained.

The analysis of their test scores was carried out using descriptive statistics

(Mean, Median, Mode, skewness and Kurtosis) while t-test was employed to test if

significant relationships existed between the skills possessed by students in rural and

urban areas and this was computed using Statistical Package of the Social Sciences

(SPSS) Version 16. T-test was used as this method will enable the comparism of the

mean of the students drawn into the two independent groups from the rural or urban

and urban areas of the study. The statistical significance of this study was set at p

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