ABSTRACT

This study assesses the socio-economic status and adult learner’s participation in functional literacy programmes in Oredo local government area of Edo State. To achieve this purpose, Four (4) research questions were raised to guide the study: The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. A total of Three Hundred and Ninety Seven (397) adults from the Six (6) adult education centres in Oredo local government area where used for the study. Since the population is small, the entire population was adopted as for the study. Hence, no sampling as the researchers decided to use the entire population for the study. And the major instruments used for data collection was the questionnaire. The questionnaire was validated and the reliability was determined through test-retest method. The data collected were analyzed using frequency count and percentage

The findings of the study revealed that Adults in the area often attend skills acquisition programme in the area, Adults have scarcely skills acquisition programme in the area and there are high attrition rate among adults who attends skills  acquisition programme in the area. It was also found out that functional literacy programmes that exist in Oredo local government area are: Catering, Hairdressing, fashion design, tailoring and bead making. It was therefore recommended that more awareness should be created by way of publicity in the various media outlets, using jingles and other forms of advertisement so that more adults can be aware that such programmes exist. It was further recommended that  provision and availability of necessary resources in terms of instructors, equipments, and infrastructures are keys to successful participation in vocational training programme and should be improved. This will go a long way to stimulate adult learners effective participation.