This paper identified and assessed factors responsible for failure in the public schools in the year 2013. The findings confirm that during the past five years, Tanzania has experienced alarming student failure rates in the public schools in particular. This paper revealed that most of the public schools have acute shortages of text books as well as laboratory equipment, incompetent and unmotivated teachers and also heavily lacking sound learning infrastructure. This study, due to financial and time constraints, adopted a case study design to strengthen investigation and therefore chose to use kinondoni district. A sample of 50 respondents was drawn and created by the use of both simple random sampling (to obtain 30 students), and purposive sampling (to get 10 parents/households, 5 head teachers, and 5 disctrict edication officers). Questionnaires, interviews, focus group discussions, observation, and review of existing education reports were employed to collect data. Data analysis was done through excel software. The study concludes and recommends the government should improve work environment by attractive salaries, better treatment of teachers, and provision of sound learning equipment and infrastructure, total subsidisation of the public schools education service delivery and ensuring effective management of this vital sector to the socio-economic development of this nation.