Repositioning the Facilities in Technical College Workshops for Efficiency: A Case Study of North Central Nigeria

This article focuses on assessing the facilities in Government Technical College workshops in the context of a developing country. A descriptive survey design was adopted. Two research questions and a hypothesis were formulated to guide the study. A 35-item questionnaire was developed based on the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) standards on Technical College workshops, and was validated by three experts. Data was collected from 101 administrators, 140 teachers, and 24 workshop personnel randomly sampled and stratified along trades in 19 Government Technical Colleges in North Central Nigeria. Mean was employed to answer the research questions while one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed to test the hypothesis using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for analysis. Results revealed that administrators, teachers, and workshop personnel shared similar views on inadequacy of facilities in Technical College workshops. It was therefore recommended that: The private sector should be encouraged to initiate and participate in the provision of facilities using such methods as build operate-and-transfer (BOT), build own-operate and transfer (BOOT) and rehabilitate-operate and transfer (ROT); special intervention funds should be set aside by Government for procurement of workshop facilities to technical colleges, such channels may include Education Tax Fund (ETF) as practiced in Nigeria; Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Parent Teacher Association (PTA), and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) should be asked for support in supplying relevant facilities to the workshops as obtained in some nations; and that a specific percentage of income tax generated annually by the Government should be utilized for provision of workshop facilities in technical colleges