EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AMONG BUSINESS STUDIES STUDENTS IN THE FEDERAL CAPITAL TERRITORY
Abstract
Employability skills refer to work-readiness, that is, possession of skills, knowledge, attitude and commercial understanding that will enable new graduates to make productive contributions to organizational objectives soon after commencing employment. Failure to acquire these work-readiness skills makes one unemployable. Despite the widespread drive to develop employability skills of students, many students leave school without the requisite skills to succeed in the world of work. The study adopted descriptive survey design with the population focus of all Business Studies Teachers in Secondary Schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Random sampling technique was used to select seven schools from each of the six area councils in the FCT making a total of 42 schools. From each school, five business studies teachers were purposively selected. Thus, a total of 210 participants were selected across the FCT as the study sample. The instrument used in data collection for the study was an adapted forty-oneitems questionnaire titled “Employability Skills Development Questionnaire” (ESDQ). The items in the questionnaire were assigned a four point modified Likert rating scale worded as: Very Large Extent, Large Extent, Little Extent and Not at all, weighted 4,3,2,1 respectively. Using Chronbach Alpha formula, a reliability coefficient of r = 0.87 was obtained after trial testing of the instrument. Frequency count, percentages, mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the data collected for the study. The findings revealed business studies teachers awareness of the employability skills, systems and technology aspect and students exposure were at little extent. It was recommended among others that government make available funds for the procurement of technology tools for the development of the business students and teachers should ensure that students are exposed to practical activities in the process of developing employability skills in the students.
Key words: Employability skills development, Business studies students, Federal Capital Territory.
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