ISSUES OF EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS DEVELOPMENT AMONG BUSINESS STUDIES TEACHERS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study examined issues of employability skills development among business studies teachers at public secondary schools in Rivers State, Nigeria. Two research questions were posed to guide the study and two hypotheses was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study was 7,330 and 40 percent of the total population was used as sample giving a total of 2,932 junior secondary school III students as respondents and simple random sampling techniques was adopted. Data for this study were collected by means of questionnaire. A total of 2,332 students who returned their instrument were studied. Test-retest method was used for the reliability test, which yielded reliability co-efficient of 0.86. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the research questions while z-test was used to test the hypotheses. Findings revealed that the basic academic and personal qualities skills acquired by the students but these skills acquired may not be effectively utilized to secure job because awareness of the importance of employability skills were not given to them as hypothesis one was significant and hypothesis two proved that there was no significant difference in the responses of the respondents on extent students can utilize the skills acquired to secure job. Based on the findings, recommendations made amongst which included that Basic academic and personal qualities skills should be effectively taught to business studies students and awareness of the need and importance of these skills need to be created to students for them to be well equip with employability skills development and teachers should effectively play their role while teaching business studies to students at public secondary schools

Keywords: Issues, Employability, Skills Development, Business Studies, Teachers