Background and school factors and pupils’ drop-out in Tanzanian primary schools: the case of Bariadi District

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors that cause pupils’ drop-out in primary schools in Tanzania. Specifically the study was conducted in Bariadi District to investigate drop-out from school in relation to family background; socio-cultural values; and schools’ efficiency. Data were collected using documents, interviews and questionnaires administered to primary school head teachers and teachers, Village Executive Officers, parents/guardians of dropouts. There were 160 respondents (five head teachers, fifty teachers, five village executive officers, fifty parents/guardians of dropouts, and fifty dropouts). Responses were tabulated and percentages were calculated in accordance with research questions. Findings revealed that pupils dropped out from school due to poor family background such as lack of awareness on importance of education, poor incomes and broken families. It was also revealed that pupils dropped out from school because of bad behaviours such as engagement in bad groups of peers outside school, negative perception of life expectance after schooling, and pupils’ bad behaviours including early marriages and prostitution which finally resulted onto early pregnancies. Finally, findings revealed that pupils dropped out from school due to schools’ poor internal efficiency such as poor school quality, poor quality of teaching-learning process and poor school academic performance. In due regard, it was recommended to the government to improve the provision of in service courses for professional development for teachers, their working as well as living conditions, expansion of school facilities, increase provisional level of scholarship to children from poor families and review some outdated school laws and regulations. Parents/guardians should be empowered by the government economically by providing incentives so as to enable them sustain their children’s education. Further researches on extent to which socio-economic, socio-cultural and behavioral problems contribute to school drop-out problem and the relevance of school policies in relation to drop-out and implementation of the Education and Training Policy of 1995 in Tanzanian Primary Schools are recommended.