Abstract:
This study was designed to determine the influence of students’ industrial work experience scheme (SIWES) on the academic achievement of Business Education students in financial accounting in Colleges of Education in Enugu and Ebonyi States. The researcher embarked on the study in order to improve the performance of students in financial accounting in Colleges of Education after SIWES. The study adopted quasi- experimental research design. Specifically, pre-test-post-test which involves non-randomized students in their intact classes was adopted. The population for the study consisted of all the 330 business education students before SIWES and 168 business education students who opted for financial accounting from first semester, year three, after SIWES drawn from five Colleges of Education in Enugu and Ebonyi States that offer business education programme. No sample was selected because the population was not too large for the study. Nine research questions and nine null hypotheses guided the study. Mean, Regression Analysis and Standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while t-test, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Financial Accounting Assessment Test (FAAT) was the instrument developed and administered for data collection. Both the instrument and the lesson plans for the students were all validated by three experts. The reliability coefficient of the instrument for the study, which was calculated using Cronbarch-Alpha method, was 0.97. The result of the study showed that: there is a positive relationship between the students’ academic achievement in financial accounting before and after SIWES; the high ability level students have higher academic achievement in financial accounting after SIWES than the low ability level students. Male business education students achieve more in financial accounting before and after SIWES than their female counterparts; there was a linear interaction of gender and ability level on the academic achievement of business education students in financial accounting in Colleges of Education after SIWES; students of public colleges of education achieve more in financial accounting than their counterparts in privately owned colleges of education and the influence of SIWES was significant on students’ achievement in financial accounting based on job specifications. After pointing out some educational implications of the study, it was recommended among others that both Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) should encourage state and privately-owned colleges of education in running a quality SIWES programme for their students based on the use of common and relevant job specifications.
