Investigate the Causes of Educational Wastage in the Government 2nd Cycle (5-8) Primary Schools of West Hararghe Zone Oromia Regional State

Abstract

The study aimed at investigating wastage in second cycle primary education focusing on drop out and grade repetition limited to the case of west Hararghe zone.The study is based on the annual statistical abstract of the zonal education office (2009-2010) characterized high rate of dropout (19.3and17.9 percent) and grade repetition (8.4and7.5percent).This indicates the low internal efficiency and high educational wastage.So, inorder to achieve this purpose, descriptive research design was used. Primary and secondary data collection methods were implmented to collect data in twenty one target second cycle primary schools and zonal education offices. A total of five hundred thirty two respondent principals, teachers, students and parents participate in the study.The collected data was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software. So as to bring out the essential patterns the data was analyzed using quantitative methods and descriptive statistics is used in order to examine the pattern of the responses. Through this study, school based, learners and parents related causes to students dropout was revealed.And school based and instruction related causes to the students repetition were identified. The degree and weight of educational wastage in the second cycle primary schools were exposed; there are high dropout and repetition problems in the zone as well as in the sample schools. The long distance from home to school; cultural impacts, parents lower standards of living, lack of parental encouragements of the students and lack of school facilities were the major causes of dropout forced the learners to given less attention to their learning, frequent absenteeism and lead them to score poor academic performance consequences to high repetition.Soit recommended that the possible measures should be taken in order to handle the wastage in education through dropping out before effecting a particular level of education results, wastage in resources and reduce number of graduates then transfer to the grade repetition responsible for hinder the intake capacity of school.