Workshop Safety Standard Compliance on Students’ Academic Performance in Technical Colleges in Rivers State

ABSTRACT: The rate of accidents involving tools, equipment and personnel in many technical college workshops in Rivers State is alarming and this has drastically dropped the students’ academic performances. As a means of reducing accidents to improve the students’ academic performance, this study is undertaking to determine Workshop Safety Standard Compliance on Students’ Academic Performance in Technical Colleges in Rivers State. Descriptive survey research design was employed for this study. The population for the study comprises 743 instructors and students of the four technical colleges in Rivers State. The study adopted stratified random sampling technique. The sample size is 260 respondents obtained through Yaro Mene’s formula.  The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire titled Workshop Safety Standard Compliance on Students’ Academic Performance Questionnaire. Two experts validated the instrument. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.77. Two research questions were answered. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions Findings from the study revealed that the students’ academic performance in technical colleges in Rivers State is poor due to noncompliance to established workshop tools, equipment, and personnel safety standards by students and instructors among others. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that workshop users should be given proper orientation by school management and government on the need to comply with tools and equipment safety as without them no meaningful workshop activity will take place. Safety kits should be given to workshop personnel as this will help minimize accidents in the workshop.

Keywords: Compliance, Accident, Hazard, Safety Standard, Academic Performance.