Abstract:
This study examined persistent dropout in rural ordinary level community secondary
school in Makete District Council. Specifically the study focused at factors for
school dropout, strategies employed to overcome the problem, effectiveness of the
employed strategies and viable measures so as to eliminate the problem.
The study adopted a mixed method design, targeting secondary school students in
Makete district. A sample size of 167 respondents was drawn by using cluster,
snowball and purposive sampling techniques. Observation, interview, questionnaire
and focus group discussion methods were used to collect primary data while
documentary review was used for collecting secondary data. Collected data were
further coded and analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS
Version 20) for tables and figures presentations.
The study discovered that economic factors other than poverty and
parents/guardians‟ negative attitudes towards secondary education are the main
factors for school dropout in Makete district. Tree farming as the chief economic
activity enable people to earn a lot of money after timber harvesting and later
transform its capital into business activities. These activities influences students to
dislike school and see that secondary education as wastage of time and so decide to
quit school so as to fully engage in these activities for generating money.
Parents/guardians also believe that investing in secondary education is the wastage of
their money and time, regarding tree farming and business as the sounding
inheritance to their children, and so most of them convince students to quit school.
Legal authorities arrested parents/guardians who hid and forced students to quit
school together with sending the dropouts back to school. These strategies were less
successful as students continued to drop out of schools. The study recommends that
there is a need of improving free secondary education, improvement of teaching and
learning environment, provision of education on the importance of investing in
human capital and general protection of children‟s rights especially that of education.
