Assessment of security consciousness among the secondary school students in the three education zones, Ebonyi State, for national cohesion and global competitiveness

Abstract

This paper determined the level of security consciousness among the secondary school students in the three Education Zones of Ebonyi state, towards national cohesion and global competitiveness. The researcher adopted the descriptive survey research design. The population of study was 5098 consisting of students, all principals, and all teachers in the three education zones. Stratified random sampling was used to select 34% of principals, and teachers from their total population respectively; and purposive sample was used to select students sample, bringing the stakeholders (sample) to 2258. A 36- items researcher-developed questionnaire tilted “Assessment of Security Consciousness Among the Secondary School Students Questionnaire (ASCASSSQ)” was used as instrument for data collection. Four research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Data collected were analysed using mean, standard deviation, and percentage scores. The Chi-square statistics was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that students in secondary schools are yet to imbibe security consciousness, and that the security consciousness of students has no significant influence on national cohesion and global competitiveness. It was recommended that School managers should make arrangements on improving students’ security consciousness by having constant student briefing and drills on security matters, to be able to handle incidences that threatens their safety, such as sexual harassment, or being intimidated by their teachers, by outsiders entering the school compound, or by the fellow students who sneak weapons to the school. Again, all the secondary school educators and staff should be given adequate opportunities to attend seminars, worship, symposium and other security related programmes to be able to inculcate security consciousness to the students through instructional process