ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to determine contributions of students industrial work experience scheme to Business Education programme in Colleges of Education in South-East, Nigeria. Six research questions and six null hypotheses guided the study. The research adopted a descriptive survey design. The population for the study was 202 Business Education lecturers in the Federal, State and Private Colleges of Education in the South-East, Nigeria. There was no sampling because the population for the study was manageable. Thus, the entire population was used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire. The instrument was validated by three experts, two in business education and one in measurement and evaluation. The reliability of the research instrument was obtained using Cronbach Alpha  reliability coefficients obtained for the six clusters were .71, .78, .76, .73, .86, and .73, respectively. The overall reliability index for the instrument was .82. A total of 195 copies of the questionnaire were retrieved and analyzed using mean with standard deviation for the research questions and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for the hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The results obtained indicated that business education  lecturers in the federal, state and private colleges of education in South-East, Nigeria were of the opinion that students’ industrial work experience schemes develop basic skills in business education students, prepares students for business careers, exposes students to needed experience in handling office equipment, develops occupational competencies in students, helps students in job readiness after graduation and develops entrepreneurial skills in students. Recommendations were made based on the findings among others that ITF should present a new order of students’ placement to facilitate appropriate supervision and postings to industries of relevance to their academic training and skill development. More attention needs to be paid to SIWES during the accreditation of SIWES approved programmes in institutions to enable the scheme attains its potential in enhancing the pool of technical skills available to the economy.