Education Policy in Nigeria: the Bane of Her Practice of Functional Vocational Education

Poor policy formulation as opined by few individuals has little or no influence on the practice of functional vocational education. This paper therefore sought to find out whether it is true that policy formulation does not significantly influence the practice of functional vocational education in Nigeria as policy implementation does. Two null hypotheses and research questions respectively were formulated to guide the study. A five-point Likert Scale and a 10-item questionnaire were designed for data collection. Mean statistics was used to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at an alpha level of 0.05. It was found out that policy formulation was equally a major cause of doom in the practice of functional vocational education in Nigeria. The study therefore recommended that equal degree of importance should be given to policy formulation and policy implementation

Financial Control Measures and the Enhancement of Administrative Effectiveness of Principals in Secondary Schools in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

This study was focused on the determination of the relationship between financial control measures and enhancement of administrative effectiveness of secondary school Principals in Akwa Ibom State. The choice of this topic was necessitated by the fact that despite the continuous personnel auditing conducted in the public secondary schools in Akwa Ibom State, financial mismanagement still persists. The population of the study was 227 principals from the 227 public secondary schools in the state. The sample size for the study was 192 using stratified random sampling technique for the selection. Eighteen-item structured questionnaire designed by the researcher was used for data collection. The instrument was face validated by five experts. Three (3) null hypotheses were tested. The major findings were that the principals have not adopted budget preparation, budget implementation and internal auditing for the control of school finances. It was found that there is significant relationship between the variables and principals’ administrative effectiveness. The recommendations made based on the findings were that (1) State Secondary Educational Board should instruct principals to prepare annual budget of their schools. (2) State Secondary Education Board should properly monitor the implementation of the school budget. (3) Internal auditors should be sent by the Ministry of Education to Schools.Keywords: Control, Measures, Enhancement, EffectivenessLWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 8(4), 70-77, 201

Scientific and Technological Researches: An Elixir for Sustainable Development of a Nation

Scientific/technological research outputs (in the form of new technologies) have become the principal tools for meeting the world ever-expanding needs for food, shelter, housing and equitable access to health-care services. This paper posits that scientific or technological research is an activity that will allow a sovereign nation to move from her present undesirable process of growth and development onto sustainable economic growth and development paths that backup sustainable financial investments.

Maintenance of Standards in Vocational Education in Nigeria: Implication for Occupational Choice and Skills Development of Students

Standards are measured with whatever be the needs and acceptable norms of the society. Standards in education are also judged by what the society requires. The Nigerian Society requires that youths come out of schools with saleable skills for employment or self-reliance to reduce unemployment. It is very true to say that the standard of education in Nigeria has fallen greatly. This is because the products of the school system flood the streets of this country without any skill to show that they went to school. There are no employment opportunities for them, and they cannot help themselves since they are unemployable due to lack of saleable skills. Most of them can neither read nor write well. It is vocational education that can help this country out of this problem. This paper looks at standards in vocational education in terms of Supervision, Curriculum, Methods of Instructional Delivery, Equipment, and Quality of Teaching Staff.LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 8(4), 45-54, 201

New Millennium Technology: A Tool for Re-Branding Education in Nigeria

Education is life-long venture and permeates all generations. It could be formal or informal depending on the approaches used. The approaches call for varied and appropriate technologies in an attempt to make teaching and learning easier and meaningful. Effective utilization of any technology is a function of technology education which Looney (2005) defined as a “study of technology that provides an opportunity for students to learn about the processes and knowledge related to technology”. Nigeria like every other developing country has not been faring well in technology education. As a result, the knowledge and techniques to develop technological literacy became elusive. Unfortunately too, technologies used before the present millennium to provide education to the populace can no more stand the taste of time hence the need for new technologies. In order to arrest the ‘negativity’ of the old technologies in providing education, this paper attempts to identify some new technologies and how they can assist in making education in Nigeria keep pace with the new millennium expectations – discovery of new technologies and their proper application or utilization in providing functional education.Keywords: Life-long, Re-branding, Education, Technology and UtilizationLWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research, 9(1), 56-66, 201