The aim of this study was to contribute to knowledge about students’ academic achievement by exploring factors impeding the academic achievement of children in public primary schools in Tanzania. The study adopted an exploratory sequential design whereby teachers’ story and closed-ended questionnaire were used to collect data from 186 informants from Dodoma Urban District. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis whereas quantitative data were subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to analyze the loadings of the items of the questionnaire for measuring low academic achievement. The findings of the study indicated that deficiency in inclusive participation and limited resources for the organization of learning was revealed as the key factor to low academic achievement. The findings also revealed that obsolete pedagogical strategies and insensitive assessment techniques were the most influential source of inhibiting children’s academic achievement. These findings are a wakeup call for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Tanzania to organize workshop aiming at changing the insensitive/apathetic attitude of teachers, parents, and other community members so that the academic achievement of the children could be scaled up.