Investigating factors that lead to school dropout in Namibia

Abstract

Although schools report a variety of reasons why learners leave school prematurely, these reasons do not reveal the underlying causes, especially multiple factors that influence learners’ attitudes, behaviours, and performance prior to dropping out. In order to understand the underlying causes behind learners’ decisions for dropping out, using a quantitative approach through document analysis this study first analysed the Education Management Information System (EMIS) reports for 2005 to 2009. The findings revealed that Kavango, Kunene and Omaheke regions were the regions with the highest dropout rates in the country. Using a qualitative approach, with a phenomenological design, the researchers interviewed school principals, school counsellors and teachers at randomly selected 20% of schools with the highest dropout rate for each region. This resulted into 58 schools in the Kavango region, 10 schools in the Kunene region and 5 schools in the Omaheke region. At the same schools, and using the snowball sampling procedure, the researchers selected and interviewed learners who have dropped out at some point during their schooling days but came back to school. The study found that, for all the learners interviewed, 50% of learners dropped out due to pregnancy, 20% dropped out due to economic factors, 15% due to system factors, 11% due to lack of parental involvement, and 4% due to cultural factors. On the basis of the findings a number of recommendations are made to mitigate the dropout phenomenon.