Bottlenecks In The Accessibility Of Secondary Education Among Girls In Tanzania: A Case Of Pastoral Communities In Tarime District

ABSTRACT

The major purpose of this study was to examine the challenges in the accessibility of secondary school education among girls in pastoral communities, specifically in Tarime district in Mara region. Three specific objectives guided this study, firstly, to evaluate girls‟ participation in secondary school education, secondly, to examine the bottlenecks that girls face in the accessibility of secondary school education in comparison with boys and thirdly to assess the mitigation measures of enhancing accessibility of secondary education in Tarime district. Triangulation of research methods was used to collect data in this study. The study involved 122 participants whereby questionnaire, interview and FGD were used as data collection methods. Data were analysed by using thematic analysis technique for qualitative data and IBM-SPSS version 20 for quantitative data. Data are presented in the form of text, tables and figures. The study findings show that girls do not have access to secondary school education compared with boys, as they found discriminated by the community; boys seem to be superior to girls when it comes to enrollment as well as participation in secondary school education. The study findings revealed that in the four selected secondary schools in Tarime district, the enrolment of boys was higher than girls by 89 students. On the other hand, the participation of boys was higher than girls in secondary school education whereby 57.1% of the students in this study agreed on this statement. Furthermore, girls in secondary schools in Tarime district seemed to be facing a number of challenges in accessing secondary school education. Such challenges include domestic chores, long distance from home to school, early marriage and pregnancies, the presence of cultural practices and family preferences of choosing boy children over girl children. It is recommended that: firstly, we should reconsider the process of reallocating students to school within the nearest ward; secondly, the whole society should be given knowledge regarding the importance of equality of both genders; especially on the needs that a girl requires; and thirdly, there has to be an establishment of homes and special schools that act as a shelter to girls that fall victim of any social injustice.