Socio-cultural Constraints Of Girls'Access To Education In Mtwara District In Tanzania

Girls' are at a detrimental situation in terms of accessing and succeeding in their formal education worldwide.Many girls are out of school throughout the world due to different reasons while culture mentioned as a primary cause and source of many problems that hinder girls' education.Around 28 million boys and 30 million girls who are supposed to be at primary school by their age are out of school,worldwide.Repetition and dropout proportion are significantly higher to girls while completion rate is very low.Also,there is a strong gender favouritism in providing education and performance dissimilarities in education concerning girls and boys.Cultural beliefs and customs such as early marriage,initiation ceremonies are among the key issues mentioned for gender inequities in retention and completion.Though girls' access to education is a worldwide problem Arab states and Sub-Saharan Africa Tanzania included recognized as the most vulnerable countries in girls access to education whereby it projected that among three girls(of school age)out of school two of them are expected never to get a chance to be in school.Regardless struggles of the Tanzania country on access to gender equality in education,the country is still suffering from gender unfairness regarding admittance and accomplishment in girls' education.The problem of access to education opportunities has remained as a big problem among girls.The percentage of girls completing a full secondary education is extremely low.The reason for this study was to evaluate socio-cultural constraints of girls'access to education in Mtwara district in Tanzania.The study applied the survey research design.Purposive and simple random sampling used to choose the respondents.Purposive sampling used to choose the study area(Mtwara District).Simple random sampling applied to choose schools,teachers and girls' students in the schools selected for the survey.There was a total of 330 respondents in the study.The study applied close-ended questionnaire to gather the information from the targeted respondents and documentary review.The questionnaire was developed from the research questions and review of the related literature and studies.Also,data from Mtwara District Education Office,about enrolment of girls and completion were used as secondary data whereby the researcher visited Mtwara District Education Office to get the data.Further than the questionnaire,researcher engaged in the informal interview with indigenous community members to understand in a detailed manner the factors that hinder girls'education in Mtwara District and neighbouring villages in the district.The data was organized and then analysed with the use of the computer.IBM SPSS software was used.Data was presented in tables with highlighting to percentages then after the outcomes described according to the objectives of the study.The findings of this study found that in Mtwara district girls' are suffering a lot in admittance and accomplishment in their education.Many girls quit school before completing their primary education and many of those who are selecting to continue with secondary education do not report to continue with their studies.For example,in 2009-2015,44%of girls dropped out of school before complete their seven years of primary education.Conversely in 2014,61%and in 2015,51%of girls who selected to continue with secondary education did not report to school to continue with their studies.Socio-cultural factors were found to be frequently linked with poor access and achievements in girls' education.Early marriage found to be a big problem in the community.Parents marry their daughters at an early age opposed to sending them to school.Traditional ceremonies also are very common in Mtwara district,and it severely affects girls' education.Unyago(which is deliberated as a local rite of passage that girls go through it at an early stage of maturity,aims to familiarize girls into social roles and sexually related roles as women in Mtwara)affects girls' access and achievements in their education.Male preference affects girls' education in Mtwara district.Girls'education is not a priority within the community.Parents have a preference to educate boys than girls.Domestic chores hinder girls' academic attainment as daughters are raised up for female roles such as child raising and domestic responsibilities.Many parents not send their girl children to school and sometimes force them to quit school to help them in domestic and economic roles.Parents and overall community have the negative perception on girls' education.The negative perception placed on girls'education by the community affect girls' education as it leads to a low value of girls'education.The outcomes of this study discovered that the improvement of girls'involvement and accomplishment in education is not the responsibility of one person.It requires the collaboration and contribution of many stakeholders include girls themselves,community members,government and non-government education stakeholders.The study concludes that socio-cultural factors negatively affects girls' access and accomplishment in their education.Since Culture is not static,it is dynamic,and gender is just human constructive.Therefore the community should change and abandon all bad socio-cultural practices that undermine girls.To enable girls to access and succeed in education smoothly.This will enable to change the whole community as educating a girl is perceived as educating the entire society.The finding of this study contributes to the advancement of knowledge about the adverse effects of bad cultural practices to girls' education.The study is also useful in informing the education stakeholders include policy makers,planners,government,non-government organizations about key socio-cultural constraints to girls' education.This will sensitize them to fight or find the way to eradicate the problem and pave the smooth way to girls'education.These findings could be used by the education stakeholders in laying down a foundation that could be used in improving the situation of girls' education.This study suggested that the government and other education stakeholders should sensitize the community on the need and significance of girls' education for girls themselves and the broad society.Education stakeholders also should launch mass media programs like television and radio programs to educate and discourage the bad socio-cultural practices in the community that deteriorate girls' education.