Perpetuators and Effects of Female Students’ Dropout from Secondary Schools in Ilemela Municipality in Tanzania.

This study addressed the grand research question that inquired, what have been the underlying perpetuators for female students’ dropout and its effects in Tanzania secondary schools within Mwanza at Ilemela municipal council? Its main objective explored study participants’ views about the root accelerators of rising girls’ dropout and its effects in the studied area. The post positivism paradigm informed the choice of methodology components, whereby the qualitative approach was opted, along with triangulated exploratory-case study designs. The sample size had 60 research participants. Qualitative data were collected using triangulated methods for data collection and analysis. Excel tool, coding and thematic methods were used to analyse data. The findings showed that the studied secondary schools are surrounded by socio-cultural economic-merchandise context with motorcycles, taxi, micro-business, fishery, and agricultural activities. Consequently, such context provides students daily transport and necessary requirements. However, despite such relevance still yet, that context exposes girl students to engage in risky and unsafe relationships. Other emerged pull factors for girls’ drop out were: child labour, early marriage, teenage pregnancy, peer pressure, drug abuse, and poverty. The study recommends the government to mobilise mass education for awareness-raising on girls’ education value. Let another study use bigger sample to study same problem in other districts of Mwanza. Keywords: Perpetuators, Dropout and Female Studen