Abstract
The study sought to examine of students’ achievement in Mechanical Craft Practice in national technical certificate examination in technical colleges in katsina state. The specific purposes of the study were to Find out strategies that can be adopted to improve Students’ Achievement in Mechanical Craft Practice in National Technical Certificate Examination in Technical Colleges in Katsina State, Determine the school based factors that affect Students’ Achievement in Mechanical Craft Practice in National Technical Certificate Examination in Technical Colleges in Katsina State, Find out socio-cultural factors that affect students’ Achievement in Mechanical Craft Practice in National Technical Certificate Examination in Technical Colleges in Katsina State among others. Four research questions were design and used to guide this study. The population of the is 1355 and 50 respondents were used as the sample. The study adopted descriptive survey research design and the area of study is Kaduna central senatorial zone. The Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 was used to calculate the reliability coefficient. Mean statistics was employed to analyse the data. The summary of the findings for this study revealed that Giving scholarship, providing qualified teachers, availability of instructional materials, educational status of the family, financial status of the family, and environment affect Students’ Achievement in Mechanical Craft Practice in National Technical Certificate Examination in Technical Colleges in Katsina State. Organizing career talks, taking students to excursion, organizing electrical/electronic based extra-curricular activities, posting students to students’ industrial work experience scheme (SIWES), improving teachers’ knowledge, providing adequate teaching aids, and organizing practical based lessons are strategies that can be adopted to improve Students’ Achievement in Mechanical Craft Practice in National Technical Certificate Examination in Technical Colleges in Katsina State. Based on the findings, recommendations were made which include that; the government should provide adequate practical workshops and sufficient teaching materials for teaching Mechanical Craft Practice in government technical colleges in Katsina State, the school authorities should be organizing organizing electrical/electronic based extra-curricular activities, the students should put more efforts in attending classes and paying more attention to their school activities than any other things.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The colonial education which was inherited by Nigeria was criticised for being too theoretical to be able to make meaningful impact on the life of Nigerians (Akinlua, 2007). Subjects taught in schools reflected the taste of the colonial education officials; hence school curricula were built around the existing colonial values. Students were supposed to mimic their teachers in subject like Mechanical Craft Practice which involved demonstration of competency. The same problem which informed dependency on past colonial education relics seems to have continued till date. Woolman (2001) was forced to comment on issue of this sort in his remark about African education. According to him, “African school systems today still follow the rigid structure of time periods and grade-level progression found in Western education.”
One definite thing expected of the educational institution to provide training to meet the demand for the human resource needs of the nation. The training of youth in the technical college aims at equipping them with useful skills and improving their knowledge in their desired areas of study. One such educational program that provides the youth opportunity to acquire skills and knowledge for effective nation building is the technical education program conducted in technical colleges.
Mechanical Craft Practice provides the youth with the practical skills in works pertaining to electrical installation, electrical windings, construction of electronic circuits, and maintenance work. However, it has been discovered that the persistently poor achievement of students in examination emanates mainly from the inappropriate teaching methods adopted by technical education teachers in the instruction of Mechanical Craft Practice as well as lack of adequate teaching facilities.
