CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
In Nigeria, secondary school curriculum provides both the academic and pre-vocational subjects with the overriding objective of inspiring students with a desire for self-employment and achievement of excellence; and to provide technical knowledge and vocational skills necessary for Agricultural, Industrial, Commercial and Economic development. These goal statements had guided the effort toward the development of new curricula for the secondary education by the Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) in pre-vocational subjects which include Agriculture, Business Studies, Home Economics, Computer Education, Fine Arts, Basic Technology and Music (FRN, 2004:20). Thus, the need for vocational skills acquisition among secondary school students cannot be over-emphasized. This is because Vocational Education has clearly been portrayed as a form of education that trains people to acquire skills, knowledge and attitude in chosen occupation at all levels. It is a functional and job oriented form of education.
However, vocational education is regarded as education for work. According to Oriafor (2008), vocational education is designed to develop skills abilities, understanding, attitude, work habits and appreciation that confer knowledge needed to enter and make progress in employment on useful and productive bases. Consequently, more than two decades after the implementation of the federal Government new policy on education, Nigeria is yet to take full advantage of this very important sub-sector. According to Aina (2006), the present state of vocational and technical education calls for a drastic and holistic intervention in order to save it from its present state of anomie.
Accordingly, the philosophy behind the introduction of vocational subjects in schools is that the learner may be self-reliant, that he may be employable in the phase of the menace of unemployment problem prevalent in the society, to train different classes of manpower needed to service or man the various technological sectors of the society. It was on this note that the Federal Government of Nigeria entered into bilateral agreement with Government of various developed countries of the world between late seventies and early eighties during which they trained Nigerian youths at the middle level of technical experience in various technical fields in what was popularly referred to as “crash programmed”. Products of that programmed formed the bulk of the presents day technocrats of Nigeria (Apagu and Duhu, 2010).