ABSTRACT

The study was carried out to determine employability skills required of Business Education students in Colleges of Education for job performance in organisations in Rivers State. The researcher adopted a descriptive survey design for the study. Area of the study was Rivers State. The population for the study was all the 36,427 senior civil servants from various ministries in Rivers State. The sample size of the study constituted 380 senior civil servants selected from various ministries. Six research questions and six null hypotheses were used to address the specific objectives. The instrument for data collection was a 100-item structured questionnaire title “Skills Required of Business Education Students Questionnaire” (SRBESQ). The instrument was validated by three experts, two in Business Education and one in Measurement and Evaluation. Reliability of the research instrument was obtained using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. The overall reliability index for the instrument was .89. Three hundred and sixty four copies of questionnaire were retrieved and analysed using mean with standard deviation for the research questions and t-test for the hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The results obtained indicated that the senior civil servants in business organisations in Rivers State were of the opinion that accounting, secretarial, electronic office, office communication, interpersonal and problem-solving skills were very highly required of Business Education students in Colleges of Education. Thus, it was recommended that the Government, Institutions, Non-Governmental Organizations should provide training manual, modern technology, update of curriculum, self-discovering and problem-solving for creativity, adequate facilities and to enhance the preparation of Business Education students in order to make them relevant in the world of work.