Towards Enhancement of Access to Quality Education: The Effect of Nomadic Communities’ Attitudes to Education in Mkalama District, Tanzania

This study aimed to investigate the effect of nomadic community’s attitudes to access to education in Mkalama District. The purpose was attained through three objectives: to explore the influence of the attitudes of nomadic community towards access to education; to investigate challenges facing nomadic community’s access to quality education and to establish ways that would enhance access to quality education of nomadic communities. Cross-sectional survey design was used to accomplish the objectives. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were used for data analysis and interpretation. The sample size of the study included 74 participants who were purposely and randomly selected. The data were collected through questionnaires, interviews and documentary reviews. The results indicated that the nomadic community’s attitudes to education affect access to education through rigid cultures such as early marriages, genital mutilation, traditional dances and unsettled life style that prevent access to education of school age children; girl children are marginalized to accessing education; there were early marriages, pregnancies and practices of genital mutilation that affects girl’s education. The data also owned that the barriers to nomadic access to education included remoteness and scattered nature of nomadic population, long distance from home to school, high truancy and dropout rate, poor performance, mobile life style, hard teaching and learning environment and unmotivated teachers affected by the school attendance. Moreover, the data establishes that there is a need of building boarding schools and introducing mobile schools in the nomadic community; enough teachers should be employed and motivated; in order to maintain school attendance, corporal punishment should be abolished; and students should be allowed to attend in schools in their local dressing (lubega)