Vocational Education in Nigeria: Standards, Quality and Productivity Assessment

Abstract

Vocational education in Nigeria should officially be placed under reforms. This is because there are quality and relevance issues that need to be addressed. This paper assesses the standards, quality and productivity of vocational education in Nigeria. Two specific objectives and research questions guided the study. A mixed research method is adopted for the study. This allowed the researchers to carry qualitative analysis through content analysis and expert interviews. The qualitative research involved 10 vocational education experts in Nigeria. Thematic analysis was done, which allowed the researchers to identify keywords from the interviews, code the keywords into categories and further identify themes from the codes. Survey research was also done to ascertain the challenges to reforming vocational education in Nigeria. The instrument was validated by experts and reliability of 0.88 ascertained. The thematic analysis revealed key factors essential for the improvement in vocational education in Nigeria. They were themed into qualitative and productive assessment. Findings also identified challenges to reforming vocational education in Nigeria. These include changes in governance, changes in management structures, lack of civil society involvement in education, emerging trends in international education, inadequate funding, lack of political will and institutional corruption. It was recommended that a statistical model for measuring productivity should be developed and applied for vocational education productivity assessment.