Causes of school dropout in basic schools: A case study of Seyere South district

Abstract

The study sought to find out the causes of school dropout in the Sekyere South District of the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The researcher used descriptive survey as the research design and questionnaires were used as the data collection instrument. A total number of two hundred and forty (240) respondents were sampled for the study: One hundred (100) pupils, ninety (90) parents, thirty (30) dropouts and twenty (20) teachers. Parents and dropouts were selected on snowballing sampling technique; teachers were sampled through purposive sampling method; and the simple random sampling method was used to select the pupils. The methods adopted for analyzing the results of the study were simple frequency and percentage tables. It was found from the study that pupils in the Sekyere South District perceive the school or learning environment in which they learn as not being conducive or friendly and thereby discourage them from attending school. The findings also revealed that many factors influence school dropout in the Sekyere South District prominent among them are: parents not being able to provide pupils’ educational needs, teasing or stigmatization resulting from poor performance, pregnancy on the part of pupils, hunger, and too much punishment by teachers. It was also found from this study that parents and teachers do not play any active roles in ensuring the retention of pupils in school. The findings of this study show that majority of pupils would be influenced to drop out of school due to the teasing or stigma they suffer as a result of disease (HIV/AIDS) of their parents. The study recommended among others that there should be seminars and workshops to educate the pupils, parents and the entire community about the dropout menace.