ABSTRACT

This study focused on Development of Entrepreneurial Skill-Based Training Programme for Secondary School Graduates in Pawpaw (Carica papaya) Production in Abia State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to: determine the objectives of  the training programme in pawpaw production, identify the contents of  the training programme in pawpaw production, identify the materials required for the training programme in pawpaw production, identify the instructional methods of the training programme in pawpaw production, identify the evaluation methods of the training programme in pawpaw production, develop and validate a draft of the entrepreneurial skill-based training programme for secondary school graduates. Five research questions were answered and five hypotheses tested and in the study. Relevant literatures were reviewed to guide the study. The study adopted Research and Development design. The population for this study was 6,293 made up of 1,014 registered crop farmers in the State, 363 Extension Agents across the three agriculture zones and 4,888 registered unemployed secondary school graduates in Abia State. The sample for the study was 376 respondents. This was determined by using Taro Yamane method (1967). Stratified proportionate sampling was used to classify the sample size into 3 groups; crop farmers, Extension Agents and secondary school graduates. Simple fraction of 0.0597 was used to estimate or determine the proportion of each stratum based on their number on the entire population. These gave a proportion of 61 crop farmers, 22 Extension Agents and 293 secondary school graduates. Simple random sampling technique was used to select one agricultural zone from the 3 zones in the state. Within the selected agricultural zone, simple random technique (balloting) was equally applied to sample 61 crop farmers, 22 Extension Agents and 293 secondary school graduates. Five sets of instruments were used for data collection for the study. The five sets of questionnaire were face-validated by three experts and their suggestions were used to produce the final instrument used for the study. Co-efficient alpha method was utilized to determine the internal consistency of the five sets of questionnaire items in which a coefficient of 0.86 was obtained. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation, while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05. The result of the hypotheses tested indicated that there was no significant difference in the mean ratings of the three groups of respondents (Crop Farmers, Agricultural Extension Agents and Secondary School Graduates). Therefore, the null hypothesis of no significant difference was accepted for all the items. Based on these findings, the study recommended among others that governments of Abia States should direct the management of skill acquisition centres in the states to integrate the developed programme in pawpaw production into skill acquisition centers for training secondary school graduates and other interested individuals for employment in pawpaw production.