Bridging the Gap Between Gendered Access and Completion: The Educational Exclusion Experiences of Girls in Rural Tanzania

Several studies conducted on the factors responsible for the educational exclusion of girls in Tanzanian and likewise, various actors at both international and national level have come up with many strategies towards attaining a higher level of female enrolment in secondary schools. In Tanzania, there are limited opportunities for a girl to be educated and efforts by the government to address the problem are outshined by the high percentage of non-completion of the mandated schooling years. The Government of Tanzania has attempted to implement the necessary policies and programs aimed at curbing the exclusion of girls from school. While the enrollment record for girls in schools appears to be impressive, the number of girls that are non-completers is quite alarming. Without critical examination of the process that leads to the exclusion of girls in school, the government will continue to chunk out statistics that did not resonate with the realities of rural areas in regards to why girls dropped out from school. For example, the 2014 statistics of Tanzania Ministry of Education suggested that truancy was responsible for 75% of students not completing their education. On the contrary, evidence gathered from the data collection shows that factors such as distance and pregnancy that were relegated to the lesser position by the government statistics are much more crucial to the understanding of the non-completion of studies. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate deeply the exclusionary factors that hindered girls education completion in Tanzania rural areas by exploring the experiences of the girls themselves to have a clear understanding how to address the issue of girl’s exclusion from their perspective. To achieve the set objectives, a qualitative approach to data collection through the methodological tool of focus group discussion and semi-structured interviews were adopted in a purposively selected village of Tegetero in Morogoro