Factors Influencing Dropout of Maasai Primary Girls

The main purpose of the study is to examine the factor that influences high dropout rate of primary girl pupils among the Maasai community which seem to be high specifically at Arusha in Tanzania. The study will involve only three districts which are Longido, Meru and Ngorongoro found in the Arusha region, in which the Stratified probability sampling method will be used and data will be collected by using questionnaires and interviews.

The study will look on different factors such as distance, the economic status of some families, the culture and traditions of Maasai and the percentage of awareness among Maasai parents in educating their daughters.

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Many studies have been done looking on the cause of the dropout rate of Maasai girls on which they found that some Maasai parents have a fear of educating their girls such as fearing on not getting a bride price once they educate their daughters.

In addition, some of the traditions such as early marriage have to be abandoned because they are against child rights. Also, teachers should create a conducive environment for their pupils to learn.

Introduction

This chapter describes the introduction of the study that attempts to examine on the risk factors that lead to the high dropout rate of girl students among the Maasai community in Tanzania at Arusha region. The research will be conducted among pastoral societies at the Arusha region and will involve people with age between 12 and 60 years old.

Background of the problem

According to (Mahoney, 2018) dropout in education is simply defined as any person who fails to complete an education course. The most reasons for this dropout may be due to the influence of some parents, culture, distance, low education services and infrastructure and even the socio-economic status of some families.

Among the Maasai community, the problem seems to be caused by the ignorance of the parents to bear their culture against providing their girls with education rather they leave them working at home, pasturing and gathering cattle

Education plays a key role in community`s social, economic and political development of any nation. The prevalence of unequal distribution of education among boys and girls hinders development at every stage of a nation.

The law of the child act (2009) article 9 recognize the child`s right to education and article 8 require the parents, legal guardians, and those having custody of children have the duty to provide the child, regardless of their gender and disability with the right to education and guidance(Rights, 2015)

In the field of education, girls lag behind globally out of 948 million illiterates in the world, two-thirds are girls. In1990, 130 million children had no access to primary school, of these 81 million were girls. Gender issues are widest in the following regions South Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa (Meena, 1996)

However, in Tanzania, it is estimated that the gross secondary school enrollment gender ratio is 0.5 despite a primary completion ratio of 0.81. Statistics indicate that fewer girls complete secondary school level than boys with completion of ratio 0.64(Mbelles, n.d.)

The project will be carried out in longitude, meru, and Ngorongoro at the Arusha region, since because of their low performance on the retention of girls in primary school. Maasai people still hold their traditional ways of life dearly until recently many Maasai parents detested western education and viewed it with suspicion. The perception that western education erodes Maasai culture is still held by many Maasai parents today.

As a result of these perceived notions of western education, many Maasai parents are reluctant to send their girl children to school fearing that, the girl children would detach from Maasai culture and community.

Statement of the problem

Many studies have been done on girls' school dropouts addressing or covering different issues related to dropout. In a study of Ramirez and carpenter, (2008) reasons for drop out of school is categorized into for issues home-based, society-community-based, school-based and student based

Also, UNICEF works tirelessly to ensure that every child regardless of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background or circumstances has access to a quality education

From all studies made it has been shown that there is no other research have been done concerning the factors contributing to the high dropout of girl child from primary schools in the Maasai community

Also, the research intended to find out the possible measures that will help the Maasai girls to complete their primary education

Objectives of the study

Main objective:

• To investigate The risk factors which lead to the high dropout rate of Maasai girls from primary school

Specific objective:

• To find out the attitude of the Maasai parents toward girls' education
• To find out the possible measures towards challenges of the Maasai girls education
• To examine Maasai culture toward girls education
• To let the Maasai parents be aware of the importance of formal education in their society

Research questions

The study will be guided by the following research questions

1. How do Maasai parents consider girls' education?
2. What are cultural practices among the Maasai that hinder girl education?
3. What measures can be taken to help encounter the challenges of the Maasai girl's education?
4. What are the factors which contribute to the dropout of Maasai girls from school?
5. What are the problems Maasai girls might face in their future life if they cannot complete their primary education?

Literature review

Many researchers have tried to look on this study, by looking on why there is a high dropout rate among girls students on primary education. As many girls end up getting pregnant, Ending up in early marriage and quit their studies so this made many people (researchers) to look at factors that influence their dropout rate.

According to (Korir, 2018) most of the factors that influence the dropout of many Maasai girls are the ignorance of parents as they bear their culture and think that educating Maasai girls may later bring great trouble as the Maasai girls will abandon their parents, some of them they may become a prostitute and some of the parents believe that education will make the Maasai girl to choose the man whom they want, which in return parents will not gain anything.

In the study done by the United Nations on the status and role of women in Eastern Africa, it was argued that the attitude of parents toward girls' education have not yet paved with that of boys. This is attributed by traditions that many parents bear against educating girls. According to (Korir, 2017) argues that some of the dropouts of girls are due to the level of literacy of the parents, illiteracy of both parents have a great influence in dropout because the children will lack parental encouragement. Hence the children end up having no interest with education as a result they end up having poor achievement.

According to UNICEF the dropout of many Maasai girls has been narrated that it is because of the wealth of bride price, this means that Maasai considers their girls as a source of wealth and prestige when given in form of cattle, goats, sheep and donkeys. Hence some families among Maasai see their girls as Gold mines that rise the economic status of the family.

Also, the dropout rate are contributed by the impact of adult mortality rate(Ainsworth, n.d.) , once one or both of the parent die many of the children lack guidance in their studies hence the only solution is to quit the studies because they lack parental guidance, they lose interest in studies, as a result, they end up getting poor performance.

The problem of dropout of many girls from the Maasai community have been increased, for example in Kenya dropout rate continues to be high, with over 50% of the children dropping out before completing the primary cycle (Korir, 2018)

According to (Children, 2018)Based on their analysis of data, it was revealed that approximately 3.5 million primary and secondary school-age children were out of school, and more than 1.7 million pre-primary school-age children had not yet enrolled in school by 2012. Using the population projection from the 2012 Census data, it was estimated that, in 2015 there were 2.2 million out-of-school children at the primary school level (aged 7-13). This makes a total of 3.6 million children out of school in Tanzania.

Many researchers have been touched by the rate of dropout meaning that they have a positive attitude on the study that made them find what is wrong among girls Maasai to have this high dropout rate. Many researchers explain the rate of dropout is caused by the culture of Maasai which looks a girl as a source of wealth to the family and community at large.

Methodology

This part will focus on the methods which would be used at the field aiming at fulfilling the research objectives. It includes area of study, study design, study population, sample size, sampling technique, data collection, and data analysis

01: location of the study

The project will be carried out in longitude, Meru, Ngorongoro, and the three of the seven districts of the Arusha region in Tanzania

According to the 2012 Tanzania national census, the population of the longitude district was 184516 people men were 89676 and females 94840, children were 48% this population is growing at a rate of 3.9%. The population of meru district was 196260 people men were 88128 and female were 108,132 children were 52% the population grow at a rate of 4.1%. Also the population of Ngorongoro district was 183152 men were 90453 and female were 92699, children 43% and the population is growing at a rate of 4.5%

Most people residing in these areas are Maasai who are pastoralists shepherd sheep, goats, cow. They are friendly people and live peacefully alongside one another.

02: Study design

The research design employed in the research will be a Descriptive study design. I will use this design because the sources of data will be easier to find, such as i will look on census data, different surveys as well as investigation reports. The descriptive study design used to carry out the research because qualitative data will be collected by the use of questionnaires for the teachers and pupils and interview will be given to the parents

03: Study population

The study will involve students and teachers from the sampled schools which will include all the Maasai pupils among the primary school present in these districts (longitude, Meru, and Ngorongoro) and their parents.

My study will not involve pupils of standard I, standard II , standard III, standard VI, and parents with An age above 65years old

04: Sample size

The following simple formula would be used for calculating the adequate sample size in the study,

Where n is the sample size, Z is the statistic corresponding to level of confidence, P is the expected prevalence (that can be obtained from same studies or a pilot study conducted by the researchers), and d is precision (corresponding to the effect size).

05: Sampling technique

The sampling technique that will be used in the research selected are stratified probability sampling technique whereby it ensures that different groups in the population are presented in the sample.

The population taken will be five primary schools with Maasai pupils, the researcher will take samples from standard IV, V, and VII from each school.

Standard IV and V are selected to participate in the exercise because they are the majority of the population that are vulnerable to the cultural factors that affect education in the Maasai community.

Standard VII will be selected so that they can provide enough information as well as to know how many Maasai girls succeeded to complete standard seven per year in the Maasai land.

Fifteen pupils (15) will be taken from each school as a sample, this means that five (5) pupils from each class under research involving two (2) male and three (3) female pupils from the Maasai community. The pupils will be randomly sampled because they are homogeneous.

Four (4) class teachers from each sampled school will be taken as a sample using stratified sampling, the class teachers are given priority because they interact closely with the pupils from the respective classes.

Also Eight (8) parents will be taken sample using stratified sampling from the population, which is one female and one male from each school. The purpose of this is to get view from both fathers and mothers from the Maasai community.

06: Data collection and procedures

Data collection tools employed in this will be a questionnaire and interview guide,

I: questionnaire

The researcher will prepare two questionnaires, one for teachers and the second for pupils. The questionnaires will compose of both open-ended and closed-ended questions. Open-ended questions will give respondents freedom on their opinions while closed-ended questions restrict the respondents to choose from the available answers on which they think is the most appropriate for each question. The aim of questionnaires for pupils and teachers is to collect precise and sufficient information for the study.

II: Interview

The researcher also will prepare interviews for the parents. Structural oral interview guide questions which will involve a face-to-face approach will help to obtain responses from the respondents about the problem under the study. The aim of the interview for the parents is because most of them do not know how to read and some speak only the Maasai language, hence it is easier for a researcher to use translators in the interview than in the questionnaire and also in the interview immediate feedback will be guaranteed.

In the data collection procedure, the researcher will point one assistant from each school sampled to carry out the distribution of the questionnaire to the selected respondents. The source of data collected will be from both primary sources such as questionnaire answers and interviews and the researcher's own experience under the study, while the secondary information will be obtained from related literature on the topic done elsewhere and in particular on factors contributing to the high dropout of girls in primary education.

07: Data analysis procedure

Descriptive statistics will be used in analyzing the findings of this study. It is divided into six areas mean, median, standard deviation, percentile, frequency and percentage.

The findings are then presented in frequency and percentage tables whereby frequency and percentage will calculate from the data obtained for table drawing.

Also, data analysis will be presented from the questionnaires that will be given to the thirty (30) pupils and fifteen (15) teachers, also the interview will involve ten parents (10), Fourteen (14) teachers and twenty-eight (28) pupils.

Ethical considerations

The relationship and intimacy that is established by the researcher to the participants is of a positive one. During the formulation of the evaluation plan, the ethical considerations will be

I Informed consent

This means that the participant in the evaluation will be fully informed about the evaluation being conducted. Participants will be aware of the purpose of the project, how the findings will be used and if any potential adverse impacts of their participation and who will have access to the findings, so this enables the participants to make decisions as to whether they will participate in the evaluation or not.

II Voluntary participation

This means that the participations will participate in the evaluation free from coercion. Participants will be free to withdraw their participation at any time without forcefully impacting their involvement in future services

III Do no harm

The Whole process of research will not cause any means of harm to the participants either in stress, pain, and anxiety, diminishing self-esteem or invasion of privacy.

IV Confidentiality

Any identified information will not be made available to or accessed by anyone but the researcher. Also Confidentiality will ensure such identified information is excluded from any reports or published documents. Hence with confidentiality participants may provide the required information without any fear.