The Extent to Which Fee Free Basic Education Policy Has Affected the Enrollment Rate of Students in Private Secondary Schools in Rombo District, Tanzania

The researcher intended to investigate the effects of fee free basic education policy on students’ enrolment rate in private secondary schools in Rombo district, Tanzania. The Social Impact Theory developed by latene (1981) guided the study. Mixed methods approach under convergent design was adopted. Target population were139 teachers, 10 head of schools and 10 school board chair persons. Purposive, Simple random and stratified random sampling technique were used to obtain 52 respondents whereby 40 are teachers, 4 are head of schools and 4 are School Board Chairpersons. Instruments of data collection were questionnaires, interview guide and document analysis schedule. Validity of the research instruments was refined through the comments from experts in research, researchers’ supervisors and researcher’s fellow students while reliability of questionnaire for teachers was measured by Cronbach Alpha and for the reliability of qualitative data triangulation will be used. Quantitative data were analyzed using frequencies, means whereas patterns and themes were developed for the analysis of qualitative data and then independent T – test was used to test the null hypothesis. The study found that FFE policy had caused decrease in students’ enrolment in private secondary schools hence shortage of funds the results of which were hindering the implementation of various school projects. Also, the school administrators were having hard time in solving various challenges facing their schools due to insufficient funds received from school fees due to decrease in the number of students. This study concludes that the FFE policy has negatively affected the enrolment rates in private secondary schools in Rombo district which in turn has affected day to day schools’ operations. Consequently, this study put forward the following recommendations for immediate effect and for further studies, management in Private Secondary schools should come up with practical survival strategies to ensure effectiveness in education delivery and the government should provide subsidies to the private secondary schools in order to cut for high running costs.