ABSTRACT
This study appraised the Internal Quality Assurance Practices of Home Economics Programme at Colleges of Education in the North-West Geo-political zone in Nigeria. In line with this, seven specific objectives, seven research questions and seven null hypotheses were raised for the study. Related literatures on quality assurance were reviewed. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design for data collection. A total of nine Colleges (five Federal and four State owned Colleges of Education) were involved in the study. The total population for the study was 598 comprised of 97 academic staff and 501 students all from Home Economics Departments. The 97 academic staffs were all used as the study sample because the number was considered small; while a sample of 216 NCE three students were drawn from the students' population using proportional sampling technique. The instruments for data collection were two sets of questionnaire (one for staff and the other for students) and a guide for document analysis. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency, mean, standard deviation and standard error. The independent t-test statistics was used to test the seven null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Six out of the seven null hypotheses set for the study were retained, while one was rejected. Findings revealed among others that there was no significant difference between Federal and State Colleges of Education in the quality status of Home Economics Programme. The study also revealed that, there was no significant difference between Federal and State Colleges of Education in students' satisfaction with Home Economics Programme and that, there was no significant difference between Federal and State Colleges of Education in the implementation of internal quality assurance practices of Home Economics Programme. The study concluded that there were internal quality assurance practices embedded into the Home Economics Programme, but their implementation were a little weak and the results of internal quality assurance practices were not adequately used to foster programme improvement. The study amongst others recommended the establishment of Departmental Quality Assurance Committee (DQAC) and a module was developed to guide enhanced implementation of internal quality assurance practices of Home Economics programme at Colleges of Education.