ASSESSMENT OF ADEQUACY OF BUSINESS STUDIES CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION ON STUDENTS SKILL ACQUISITION

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

Business Studies offer at junior secondary schools level in Nigeria contribute significantly to the national development and economic growth. It is aimed at providing the recipients with the needed skills and competence for employment and self-reliance. This is perhaps, the reason for its recognition in the revised National Policy on Education (1981). Business Studies consists of learning activities in relation to shorthand, commerce, keyboarding, office practice, book keeping and computer education. Business studies in secondary schools provides the students with the knowledge, skills, understandings and attitudes needed to fit into office occupation and the world of business. This implies that business studies has a propensity of making one pre-occupied with all that has been learnt while in school in order to earn a living in the face of unemployment.

Curriculum is the totality of activities carried out under the auspices of a school in response to societal demands. It consists of a continuous chain of activities necessary for translating educational goals into concrete activities, materials and observable behavioral change.Curriculum of any school is designed for the purpose of bringing about changes in the behavior of the pupils as well as developing their knowledge, skills and competences.Curriculum is the planned learning for the guidance of the school authority.

The learning is carried out in group or individually either inside or outside the school.The focus of a school curriculum is usually the learner, the learning process and the target or expected transformation from the state of ignorance to that of knowledge, from unskilled to skilled, from thoughtlessness to positive and innovative or creative thinking. In other words, the major objective of school curriculum is todevelop and direct management of human skills and competences to stand the test of societal changes in the process of producing needed goods and services. It is based on this that business studies are embedded into the curriculum of secondary schools.

ASSESSMENT OF ADEQUACY OF BUSINESS STUDIES CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION ON STUDENTS SKILL ACQUISITION