Effect of Entrepreneurship Education on Entrepreneurial Behaviour of Secondary Students in Rivers State

Effect of Entrepreneurship Education on Entrepreneurial Behaviour of Secondary Students in Rivers State

ABSTRACT

The study examined effect of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial behavior on secondary students in Rivers state. Four research questions and four hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study consisted 237 public secondary schools in twenty three education zones with student population of 118, 723. Based on students’ attendance register, a sample of 164 students from eight (8) secondary schools in four education zones was drawn using the multi stage sampling technique.

Instruments used for data collection consists of Students’ Adaptive Entrepreneurial Behavior Test (SAEBT) and Students’ Adaptive Entrepreneurial Behavior Evaluation Scale (SAEBES). Data generated from trial testing were analysed using Cronbach Alpha statistics and the overall reliability index of 0.44 was obtained for the control group and the index of 0.79 for the experimental group.

Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyse the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Results of the hypotheses yielded a significant mean score difference between the control and experimental group on all the sub-variables of entrepreneurial behavior.

Findings of the study indicate that entrepreneurship education has a far reaching effect on entrepreneurial behavior when measured on opportunity identification, conduct of feasibility study, writing of business plan and business plan presentation to the audience. Based on the findings, recommendations were made which include: that there should be prompt training of entrepreneurship education teachers for secondary school education; that the curriculum of secondary education be reviewed to include entrepreneurship education as a compulsory subject.

INTRODUCTION

Education plays a very important role in socio-economic development including employment creation. With this fact, some African countries including Nigeria have put in place innovative reforms to strengthen their education systems. However, there is a limited progress in comparison with other nations of the world. This may be contributed by insufficient understanding of the positive effect that education can have on economic development (European Commission, 2009).

Based on that fact, education is defined as the process of learning to live as useful and acceptable member of society. Thus, the definition of education has two key components, namely usefulness and acceptability. Usefulness may entail the process of converting a person from being non-productive to become productive in a particular society and thus an entrepreneurship education may serve the purpose. A key assumption underlying this belief is that entrepreneurial skills and behaviours are not fixed personal characteristics.

They can be learned through education system using an appropriate curriculum. However, one of the main challenges facing Nigeria education system is the appropriateness of educational package that can deliver on the skills needed to boost entrepreneurial behaviour in order to deal with unemployment issue. In attempt to address this challenge, Nigeria government introduced entrepreneurship education in the secondary school curriculum.

Supplementary education policy reforms such as change in educational system from 6-3-3-4 to 9-3-4, curriculum review, teacher training and quality assurance were also put in place. To ensure effective implementation of the policy reform, the Rivers state government of Nigeria further 2 declared state of emergency in primary and secondary education. Based on that development, secondary school students are assumed to be prepared for entrepreneurship before and after graduation.

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