ABSTRACT
Educational resources constitute the bedrock of an educational system. Comments from stakeholders in the educational system suggest that facilities are over-stretched. The state of equipment in workshops depicts a sorry state of affairs and teachers seem to be inadequate both in quality and quantity. It is believed that this situation could have serious impact on the quality of education of the school leavers. This study, therefore, investigated the availability of educational resources and examined the relationship between the available educational resources and students’ academic performance in technical colleges in South - West of Nigeria between 1998 and 2001. Eleven research questions were raised to give direction to the investigation. The first six questions were answered while the rest five were hypothesized.
The research was a descriptive study which employed correlational ex post facto research design. The correlated variables (teachers in number and quality, technical supporting staff, facilities, equipment and academic performance) were not manipulated. They had already occurred before the actual study. All the twenty-eight technical colleges in the South – West of Nigeria were used while ten of the trades that were offered in all the colleges were sampled. Eleven checklists were used to obtain data from the technical colleges. Ten of the checklists, Technical College Resource Situation Checklists (TECRSC I – X), were adopted from the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) approved list of standard laboratory and workshop equipment for technical colleges. The eleventh checklist, TECRSC XI, was prepared by the researcher. It generated data on the staff situation in the colleges, available workshops and academic performance of students and was validated by the two supervisors. The eleven instruments were administered on Heads of Department of Engineering, Construction, Miscellaneous and Business studies. Data collected were analysed using frequencies, ratio, averages, percentage, bar charts and Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, r.
The study revealed that there were high teacher-student ratios (between 1:22 and 1:47) in four of the six States contrary to between 1:15 and 1:20 prescribed by NBTE. The percentage of the available qualified teachers, technical supporting staff, equipment and students’ academic performance was low in all the technical colleges while the percentage of the available workshops was found to be high. Moreover, the study found that an inverse significant relationship (-0.22, -0.24, -0.29) existed between teacher-student ratio and students’ academic performance over the three years of study. A positive significant relationship was found between students’ academic performance and (each of) quantity of qualified teachers, available workshops and equipment; these being (0.30, 0.35, 0.39), (0.33, 0.34, 0.38) and (0.24, 0.25, 0.28) respectively over the three years (p < 0.05 in each case). It was recommended that efforts should be made by all stakeholders to provide adequate educational resources.
