PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS ADMITTED WITH DIFFERENT ENTRY CERTIFICATES TO THE NIGERIAN CERTIFICATE IN EDUCATION PROGRAMME AT THE FEDERAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION ( TECHNICAL ) , OMOKU

This study atempted to determine the levels of academic performance of two groups of students admited with diferent entry certfcates to the Nigeria certfcate in Educaton (NCE) Technical Programme and to fnd out whether either group difered signifcantly in terms of performance. Seventy (70) frst year Technical students at the Federal College of Educaton (Technical), Omoku, were monitored during the 2011/2012 academic year for the purposes of this study. The data consisted of raw scores obtained by these students in fve (5) courses. The data were analysed according to their arithmetc means and a t-test. The reliability of t-test results were ascertained by the use of an f-test of group variances. The study established that the secondary school certfcate students performed signifcantly beter than their City and Guilds certfcate counterparts, and both groups difered signifcantly in other aspects of academic performance.


INTRODUCTION
Human civilizaton is quite ofen linked to technological advances and developments.Technical educaton is thus an instrument of technological advancement and industrialisaton (Amasuomo & Biebuma, 1990).This has been corroborated by Ifejika (1990), who reported that the key manpower needed for the rapid development of a naton is technical in nature.This is because it is the technical manpower that induces the acceleraton of scientfc and technological development; in order for a country to advance technologically, it therefore requires teachers trained in technical educaton.It was in realisaton of this that the Nigerian government established the Federal Colleges of Educaton (Technical), while the state governments established vocatonal and technical educaton departments in the conventonal Colleges of Educaton.
The technical teachers graduatng from these colleges are expected to teach Introductory Technology in either Junior Secondary Schools or Junior Technical Colleges, and to specialise in a profession such as automotve, constructon, electrical/electronic, metalworking or woodworking technology educaton.This is in line with the aim of the Nigeria Certfcate in Educaton (NCE) Technical Programme, which is to provide technical teachers with the intellectual and professional background adequate for teaching technical subjects and to make them adaptable to any changing situaton in technological development, not only in the country, but also in the wider arena of the world at large (NCCE 2008).
At present, two groups of students are admited into the NCE (Technical) Programme.These are those students with either Senior Secondary School Certfcates (SSCE) or City and Guilds (C&G) or West African Examinaton Council (WAEC) Technical Intermediate Craf Certfcates (NCCE 2008).The SSCE certfcate is awarded to students from the secondary schools, while the C&G or WAEC Technical Certfcate is awarded to students from technical colleges.The entry requirements for the School Certfcate group is a passing mark in at least fve (5) subjects, including a passing mark in English language and three (3) credits passed in mathematcs and two (2) diferent science subjects.These requirements should be obtained at no more than two sitngs in the West African School Certfcate Examinatons or its equivalent.
The City and Guilds or WAEC Technical group consists of students who have met the entry requirements by passing either the City and Guilds or WAEC Technical Intermediate Craf Certfcate, as well as fve (5) credits in English Language, Mathematcs and three (3) in other Science subjects on the Federal Craf Certfcate (FCC).Both groups of students are admited into the Nigeria Certfcate in Educaton (Technical) afer passing the entrance examinaton given by the Joint Admission Matriculaton Board (JAMB) for the Colleges of Educaton and Polytechnics.
In light of the foregoing, the study is therefore an atempt to determine the levels of academic performance of the secondary school certfcate and the City and Guilds certfcate groups of students.Various factors contribute to determining the academic performance of students in any educatonal endeavour.These factors may range from the academic background of the students admited to a programme of study (Ihiegbulem, 1992;Geiser & Stantellices, 2007), the type of school a student atended prior to admission into a programme (Kyoshaba, 2009;Considine & Zappala, 2002), and the various entry qualifcatons obtained by the students for admission into a higher academic programme (Ibe-bassey, 1988;Mlambo, 2011).

Literature Review
According to Wikipedia (2013), academic performance is the outcome of educaton; it is the extent to which a student, teacher or insttuton has achieved their educatonal goals.Thus performance is characterised by performance on tests associated with coursework and the performance of students on other types of examinatons (Kyoshaba, 2009).
Various studies have been carried out on the factors that afect students' academic performance or achievement in schools, colleges and universites.Some of the factors identfed and reported to have afected the academic performance of students in these diferent setngs are: student efort, previous or prior educatonal performance, self-motvaton, the social-economic status of the students' parents, the students' age, number of hours of study per day, admission points, diferent entry qualifcatons, tuiton trends and the students' area of residence (rural or urban) (Farooq, Chaudry, Shafq & Berhanu, 2011;Ali, Haider, Munir, Khan & Ahmed, 2013).
Admission points and the diferent entry qualifcatons, which are the results of prior or previous academic performance likely to afect the students' future academic performance, have been considered in this study, as this research concerns the academic performance of students admited with diferent entry certfcates.Tertary insttutons all over the world, including Nigeria, use prior academic performance in terms of admission points or diferent entry qualifcatons/certfcates as a basis for selectng students for admission into the colleges of educaton, polytechnic schools and universites.These admission points or entry certfcates are always of equivalent ratng or value, even though they may be awarded by diferent examinaton bodies.Thus Brat and Stafolani (2002) observed that the measurement of the students' prior educatonal outcomes or performance is the most important indicator or determinant of the students' future academic performance.
The type of school a child atended also afects the academic performance of the student.In this regard, Kyoshaba (2009) observed that students' educatonal outcome and academic success is greatly infuenced by the type of school which they atended.The school we atend is the insttutonal environment that sets the parameters of a student's learning experience.In agreement with this, Considine and Zappala (2002) reported that the type of school a child atends infuences the educatonal outcomes; furthermore, schools have an independent efect on the students' educatonal atainment, and this is likely to operate through the variaton of quality and attudes.In the same vein, Miller and Birch (2007), while studying the infuence of the high school atended on university performance, observed that outcomes at the university level difer according to the type of high school atended.Thus, a student's school background is positvely related to his or her academic performance at an undergraduate level.In additon, Ali et al. (2013) and Kwesiga (2002) also observed that the learning outcomes and educatonal performance of students are strongly afected by the type of educatonal insttuton where they received their educaton.However, this is a functon of the number of facilites a school ofers, which usually determines their quality, and which in turn afects the performance and accomplishments of its students.
Entry qualifcatons linked to diferent certfcates of equivalent value for student admission into post-secondary insttutons is another factor that afects the students' academic performance at post-secondary levels.Although the certfcates each group of students obtained from diferent examinaton bodies may be equivalent, the curriculum content and the expected educatonal outcomes may not be exactly the same.In a study conducted by Ringland and Pearson (2003) on the diference between diploma entrants and direct 'A'-Level entrants and the subsequent performance of each group reported that there was no signifcant diference between the groups; however, performance in terms of academic achievement prior to reaching the university did appear to afect performance at university to a small extent.In a related study, Mlambo (2011) observed that for a number of insttutons, student admission is based on a number of diferent qualifcatons, to the extent that students receiving instructon in the same course difer greatly in terms of their prior knowledge.This being the case, one might wonder whether other researchers totally agree that prior educatonal performance, admission points and diferent entry qualifcatons truly afect future academic performance.The answer is no.In a study on the relatonship between previous academic performance and subsequent achievement at the university level, Huws, Reddy and Talcot (2006) found that students learning or studying at the graduate level and scores earned failed to predict any level of academic achievement at university.The Academic Admission Council at Oregon State University ( 2003) also disagreed with the view that academic performance is determined by prior academic performance.They held that traditonal measures of academic potental, such as grade point average or 'A'-level grades did not predict academic performance at university.Mlambo (2011) also reported that there was no signifcant diference in the academic performance among students due to diferences in the admission criteria employed; the same study observed that while varied, these criteria adequately assessed the potental of students to handle the demands of courses in agriculture.However, holders of diplomas in agriculture and other qualifcatons appeared at the botom of the academic performance chart.
Nonetheless, it is very important to note that even though these studies do not agree with former studies that indicate achievement in previous studies afects future performance, they did confrm that admission scores are related to academic performance at the university level, but to a very minimal extent (Ali, et al.;Mlambo, 2011;Kyoshaba, 2007).
In light of the related literature reviewed, it seemed pertnent to fnd out whether there is actually any diference in the academic performance of students with diferent qualifcatons.This is because quality technical teachers are very relevant in technical educaton.Thus, the success or failure of any technical educaton system is dependent on the quality of its teachers (Banjo, 1974).Also, the level of academic performance of the students in the NCE Technical Programme could prove to be an index of the quality of the technical teachers in the system (Ihiegbulem, 1992).Thus, this level of academic performance, in terms of the two groups of students admited into the NCE Technical Programme with SSCE or C & G certfcates, respectvely, was the subject of examinaton of this study.It also examined whether the groups difered signifcantly in terms of their academic performance.

Objectves Of The Study
Specifcally, the objectves of this study were to determine: • The levels of academic performance of two groups of students, one with a senior secondary school certfcate and another with a City & Guilds certfcate, admited to the NCE Technical Programme.
• Whether the academic performance of the groups difered signifcantly.

Research Questons And Hypothesis
Based on the stated objectves, the study sought answers to the following research questons: • What are the levels of academic performance of the senior secondary school certfcate and City & Guilds certfcate students in each of the selected courses in the study?
• Does the academic performance of the groups difer signifcantly in the selected courses?
The following null hypotheses were formulated as a guide for the study: • There is no statstcally signifcant diference in the academic performance between the senior secondary school certfcate and City & Guilds certfcate students.
• There is no statstcally signifcant diference in the homogeneity of variance of the school certfcate and City & Guilds certfcate students in terms of their performance in each of the courses.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH 2.1 Choice Of Insttuton
The Federal College of Educaton (Technical) in Omoku, Rivers State, Nigeria was chosen for the study.The choice was based on the fact that it has an approved School of Technical Educaton with accredited departments.It also presumably has qualifed staf and standard workshops with tools and equipment for the NCE Technical Programme.

Populaton And Sample
The study populaton was made up of eighty-four (84) frst year technical students at the College during the 2011/2012 academic year.Of these students, forty-eight (48) students entered the programme with secondary school certfcates and thirty-six (36) students gained admission with City and Guilds certfcates.Forty (40) students with secondary school certfcates and thirty (30) students with City & Guilds certfcates (representng 83.33% of the populaton) were used as the study sample.The selecton of the sample was done alphabetcally for both groups for reasons of convenience.This means that the frst forty (40) and thirty (30) names on the list of each group were selected, respectvely.

Choice Of Course
Five (5) courses taught in the frst year of NCE Technical Programme were considered for the study.These courses were: TED 111 (Introducton to Metalwork), TED 112 (Introducton to Woodwork), TED 113 (Introducton to Electrical/Electronics), TED 114 (Introducton to Building) and TED 115 (Introducton to Automobile).The courses were chosen because they are the core/compulsory courses taken by all frst year technical students.The researcher used only fve (5) core courses for reasons of convenience and with the assumpton that similar results were likely to be obtained in other courses.

Data Collecton And Analysis
The researcher obtained the students' raw scores from the School of Technical Educaton at the end of each semester.These scores consttuted the data used for the study.Data were analysed using the arithmetc means and a t-Test of two independent group means.An f-test was used to ascertain the homogeneity of group variance.
Mean scores of secondary School and City and Guilds certfcate students were calculated for each course.They were used to determine the level of academic performance of each group in each course.The minimum passing mark of 40% and a maximum passing mark of 100 % for each course were used for the purposes of this study.This was in accordance with the passing mark for every course taught at the College.This means that group mean-scores of 40% or above consttute a passing score for the group in each course.
In testng the hypothesis, the standard deviaton of both groups was calculated for each course.A t-test was used to test for the signifcance of diferences in academic performance between the two groups.All t-tests were two-tailed and conducted at a 5% level of signifcance.The f-test of homogeneity of variance of both groups in each course was carried out by calculatng the f-rato of group variance using the Hartley's F-max test for each course, with the greater variance as the numerator and smaller variance as the denominator.The tests were two-tailed and conducted at a 0.05 level of signifcance.The scores further revealed that the School Certfcate students performed beter that their City and Guilds counterparts in each of the courses.On the whole, the level of academic performance of the School Certfcate group was moderate, while the City and Guilds group was low.

Test Of Signifcant Diference In Group Performance
The results of the test of signifcant diference in group performance are shown in Table 2.The test was conducted with a degree of freedom (df) of 64 and probability level of P>0.05, with an expected critcal table value (t-value) of 2.00.The calculated t-values of the courses taken by the secondary school certfcate and the City and Guilds groups were as follows: for TED 111 Metalwork,3.48;TED 112 Woodwork,3.26;TED 113 Electrical/Electronics,18.26;and TED 114 Building,8.39.These were higher than the expected critcal table value of 2.00, except in the case of TED 115 Automobile (1.81), which was less than the t-critcal value of 2. Since four (4) out of the fve (5) courses used for the test confrmed that there was a signifcant diference, the conclusion was therefore valid: there was statstcally signifcant diference in academic performance between the secondary school Certfcate and City and Guilds certfcate students.This reveals that the secondary school certfcate students performed signifcantly beter than their City and Guilds certfcate counterparts.Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected.The t-test results were considered to be reliable enough, since the sample was large.According to Osuala (1987), in order for a t-test to be reliable, there should be proper sampling and the variances of the populatons should be homogenous.Also, where the sample size is 30 or more, the t-test results are not seriously afected if the distributon of the scores is not normal.Also, the t-distributon curve must be fairly close to the normal curve.Therefore, the reliability of t-test results for the fve courses in the study shall depend on normality of the distributon of scores of both groups and the homogeneity of their variances (Ihiegbulem, 1992).Osuala (1987) further stated that, for larger samples of 30 or more, if the tdistributon approaches the z (normal) distributon and t-value for the means of the two independent groups, it also approaches the z-value for the same group.

Test Of Homogeneity Of Group Variances
The results of the f-tests using the Hartley's F-max test for homogeneity of variance are presented in Table 3.The F-max test was used to determine whether or not the assumpton had been satsfed that there is no statstcally signifcant diference in the homogeneity of variance in the performance of the school certfcate and City & Guilds certfcate students in any of the courses.To determine the f-value, the larger variance among the two groups in each of the course was divided by the smaller variance.The results in Table 3 revealed that the calculated f-values of the courses for the secondary school certfcate and the City and Guilds groups were: for TED 111 Metalwork, 1.24; TED 112 Woodwork, 1.56; TED 113 Electrical/Electronic, 1.33; moreover, the values for TED 114 Building (1.22) and TED 115 Automobile (1.07) were lower than the expected t-critcal value of 1.84.At a probability level of P>0.05 and with a degree of freedom (df) for the numerator of 39 and for the denominator of 29, the variance of both groups in each of the courses was therefore homogeneous and not signifcantly diferent; this implies that the calculated t-values were reliable.

DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
The fndings showed that the secondary school certfcate students performed relatvely beter than their City and Guilds certfcate counterparts when the mean scores are considered.The signifcant diference in the level of academic performance between the two groups could be atributed to the diference in academic background of both groups in terms of their entry qualifcatons (Ihiegbulem, 1992, Geiser & Santelices, 2007); and the type of schools they atended.While one group atended secondary schools, the other atended technical colleges.This fnding is consistent with results reported by Kyoshaba (2009); Considine and Zappala (2002); Ali et al. (2013) and Kwesiga (2002), who collectvely and separately agreed that educatonal outcomes and academic performance was greatly infuenced by the type of school a student atended, and that schools have an independent efect on a student's educatonal atainment.In additon, Miller and Birch (2007) also observed that outcomes at the university difer according to the type of high school atended.Furthermore, Ibe-bassey (1988) also reported that the academic performance of students on end-of-semester degree examinatons have been signifcantly infuenced by the various entry qualifcatons of the students.The efect of entry qualifcatons in the form of diferent certfcates of equivalent value for student admission to postsecondary insttutons was described by Mlambo (2011); he describes that for a number of insttutons, a student's admission is based on a number of diferent qualifcatons, and the result is that students receiving instructon in the same course difer widely in terms of their prior knowledge.Ringland and Pearson, (2003) reported that although there was no signifcant diference in academic performance between the diploma entrants and direct 'A'-level entrants, performance in terms of the academic achievement of students prior to university studies had an afect on their performance at university to a small extent.
Another factor that could contribute to the diference in the level of performance between the two groups is that the secondary school students, apart from taking many subjects at the Junior Senior Secondary School, are also exposed to curricula oferings which begin to focus their atenton and interest toward future career goals (Bojuwoye, 1989).Furthermore, secondary school educaton broadens the students' interest, knowledge and outlook and makes them appreciate the relevance of educaton in their lives, through an understanding of the relatonship between educaton and employment opportunites in the labour market (Achebe, 1986) and Bojuwoye, 1989).However, the abovementoned report is in contrast with the City and Guilds students, whose curriculum is rigid, pre-vocatonal and tailored towards a profession.Therefore, when such students, whose curriculum is not broad, but rather narrowly focused on a career, are obligated to study courses that are not traditonally in their area of study according to the NCE Technical Programme, they are bound to perform more poorly than their school certfcate counterparts, who had much more fexible curriculum content.Secondly, the NCE Technical curriculum blends theory with practce, and this favoured the School Certfcate group more than the City and Guilds students whose training has a more practcal orientaton.The t-test of signifcance also showed that both groups statstcally difer in terms of academic performance.This fnding was robust and proved reliable through the results of the homogeneity test of group variance in the fve courses.

CONCLUSION
It was concluded from the fndings that the level of academic performance of secondary school certfcate and City and Guilds certfcate groups were unequal, with the secondary school certfcate group having a notceable edge in academic performance over the City and Guilds certfcate group.There was also a statstcally signifcant diference in the performance of both groups in the fve courses at the 5% level of signifcance.Based on the fact that the secondary school certfcate group performed academically beter than the City and Guilds certfcate group, the researcher recommends that: • Lecturers should ensure that the City and Guilds group improve their academic performance by improving their instructonal methods.
• The College should provide both lecturers and students with tools, equipment and other instructonal aides to improve academic performance.
• Students (especially the City and Guilds group) should be advised to work harder to improve their academic performance.
passing marks in TED 112 and TED 114.The secondary school certfcate group earned moderate, yet passing marks in TED 113 and TED 115.However, the City and Guilds group earned barely passing marks in TED 115 and failed TED 113.
Table1demonstrates that both groups earned a passing mean score of 40 % in each of the courses, except TED 113 (Electrical/Electronics) where the City and Guilds group had a score of39.03%, which fell below the passing mark of 40%.The mean scores also revealed that both groups had low passing marks in TED 111, and moderate, yet

Table 2 .
Test of Signifcance of Diference in Group Performance

Table 3 .
Test of Homogeneity of Group Variance