Factors which lead to students' poor Academic performance in most of African Secondary Schools. ~ CILUASHAZ

Case study of Tanzania

Tanzania Ward Secondary schools are those schools particularly secondary schools which most of them built in rural areas by the Government with the aim of providing education services to the young people of Tanzania. The government aimed to achieve its plans that every child in Tanzanian must get education and by fulfilling its plan they built many schools in every ward so as to make it easier for the children to attend the school. The plan to build these schools was implemented well and almost all ward in Tanzania regions and Districts have schools, however some wards missed this opportunity from the government and some students manage to attend to the nearest schools which built in other wards.

Most of ward established schools in Tanzania has no enough learning materials for their students, these include books and other related publications. Example you may find the class of 50 students, only 10 books available for a certain subject. This is a greater challenge to both teachers and students, because students need books for them to learn.

Environment also is one of the great challenge to students where by most of the schools located far away from where the students reside, therefore students tend to walk long distance from school to home, example you may find that the school is located 5 to 10 KM from where students resides. This make student to walk long distance from home to school, hence the students get tired while they are at school due to long distance, for this students tend to sleep in the class while teacher is teaching as a result they can’t focus and pay attention on what is going on in the class.

Most of students in these schools come from poor families which they can not afford to offer all school basic needs such as books, pens, proper uniform and food or pocket money. This make student to be full of stress all the time she or he is at school, due to this students do not focus on learning rather they always think on how they can survive well at school. The stressful effect that a student she or he has make him or her from not performing well in his or her academic activities.

Due to family poverty many students do not have a proper and good learning room and or house, this is because most of village house are mud walled house with no access to electricity despite the government effort to build an electricity infrastructures in villages. You may find that the house has no even large windows and large rooms for students to have enough space for him or her study quietly. The environment at home may be worse as some of students they don’t have tables, chairs and bed at home. This is greatest challenge for these students and due to this students may perform poor ly because she or he has no favorable learning environment.

This means that, many parents or guardian they are not even caring about their children, they are not even daring to check out their progress in their academic, parents and or guardian are busy with work due to poverty, most of the parents are busy working to get something for the family, in order to make living for the whole family. On the other side other parents decide to be drunker, that is, they tend to consume alcohol due to stress that he has about his or her family. Due to this reason they tend not to care about their children, as a result a child tend to decide what to do on her own. Some of them try to engage in small activities to make them get a little money to make him or her survive well at school. Due to this it is obvious that a student will perform poorly in her or his studies as she or he has no enough time to keep himself or herself busy learning.

Due to family poverty students tend to have many works to do while she or he is at home, that is they tend to help their parents and or guardians to do some activities at home like, washing clothes, farming, selling different products including green vegetables, cooking and so on. These activities make a child to lack enough time to revise what she or he has taught at school, further more it make him or her tired and hence he she cant read while she or he is at home.

Motivation can make someone to do great job, and motivation is of different types, so because most of parents and or guardians are busy, they are not motivating their children as parents themselves are busy with their own business, it is obvious that they have no time to spend with their children and promising them to get rewards when doing great in their academics. As results a child goes to school without knowing what she or he is doing.

Other things include, distance from home to school, hungry while she or he is at school, lack of challenges from other schools, nature of the students themselves, and readiness of students themselves, that is you may find out he students themselves are not ready to receive secondary education, others they are even forced to go to school by the local government leaders. Also the issue of hungry while they are at school play great part in making them perform poor in their academic activities.

There might be several factors which may lead to poor academic performance but the above mentioned are the most commonly factors that cause or may lead to poor academic performance