Abstract:
There is no doubt that education has an enormous potential to deliver people out of
poverty, bridge the inequality gap and accelerate socio-economic growth and
development. Community secondary schools currently are important to ensure
universal access of secondary education and improve education quality. Efforts have
been made to improve the condition in the community secondary schools and poor
academic performance. Efforts included increasing teachers’ employment but there
are many issues that hinder the effectiveness including socio-cultural factors. The
overall objective of this study was to determine socio-cultural factors affecting
community secondary school students’ academic performance in Mvomero district.
The study adopted a cross sectional design. The study involved 110 respondents;
these are 100 students and 10 key informants. Respondents were obtained through
random sampling technique. Data were collected through the structured
questionnaire administered to students, Checklist administered to key informants,
that is, parents/guardians of students; teachers and people who lived nearby the
community schools. Focus group discussions (FGD’s) were also used during the
study to complement information. Findings were analyzed using Statistical Package
for Social Sciences Version 16.0 software programme and STATA data analysis
software followed by interpretation of results. Study findings illustrated that socio-
cultural factors such as family size; family members capable of working; education
of the parents; parents’ occupations; distance to and from school and students’ time
spent on doing domestic chores affected students’ academic performance. Study
findings revealed that there were poor parents involvement in the academic issues
related to their children. Moreover, study findings showed that students’ behaviours
