Truancy - Factors, Effects, Ways to Overcome

Truancy

Factors, effects, ways to overcome

1. What is Truancy

• Truancy is any intentional unauthorized or illegal absence from compulsary education. It is also known as hookey.
• Truancy is against school regulation. Statistics show that more secondary students play truant compared to primary. Hence, a good number of adolescents play truant.
• Instead of the daily routine of attending school, these young people stray and this is an early sign to parents, teachers and the society to provide help for these students.

1. Factors - The influence of friends

• Students are easily influenced by friends. Good friends can lead to a positive lifestyle but wrong ones, will affect badly.
• Students usually truant to spend time with their peers. They will usually plan ahead before playing truant to do activities such as going for movies, play games or simply to do empty talks.
• Friends’ influence have greater impact especially on secondary school students as they require good companion.
• Truancy are mostly done in groups as it is rare that we know truancy are done alone.
• Youths are easily influenced as they won’t be thinking rationally and they will have various reasons considered reasonable for them to play truant.

1. Stress

• When students experience stress at home, they will be likely carry it with them to school. They will lose interest to attend school with such stress and will turn elsewhere to release their stress.
• Due to stress, students may feel depressed and do not want to learn. They will perform weakly and find difficulty to understand what being taught by the teachers. To avoid embarrassment, they prefer to be absent and seek entertainment elsewhere.

1. Lack of religious knowledge and parents’ attention

• Early religious education is very important in a student’s life as they ggo through a transitional stage at this teenage age.
• Lack of religious and moral education will led the students to not be afraid of making mistakes, so they do not find it wrong to be truant.
• At home, children who are not educated by their parents, will have poor attitude in responsibility.

1. Effects of truancy – Increase in Social Problems

• Truancy will cause an increase in social problems, where students will frequent places such as video game centres, cyber cafes, parks and shopping malls.
• The games they play may contain violent or negative elements that will influence their behaviour and encourage them to behave badly in the public.

Students will also learned bad activities from spending time at parks and shopping malls, such as stealing, smoking and even taking drugs.

1. Poor performance in education

• Students who frequently play truant, will be left behind from what being taught in the classroom.
• Students will sort of be addicted when they start to being absent from school and continues to do so, resulting in poor understanding in the subjects and ends with bad results in important examinations.

1. Ways to overcome – Counselling

• Counselling should be given to students with high absent rate. Teachers should speak to these students and find out the reason why they are playing truant.
• Stricter rules should also be enforced in schools to deter students from truancy. Heavy punishments such as suspend or expelling from the school should be applied on students that are frequently absent without good reason.

1. Parents

• Parents should always keep an eye on their children to avoid them from truancy. Parents must monitor their children activities when they go to school.
• Parents should also spend more time with their children after they are back from school. They can bring them out for holidays and meals outside so the students will not feel lonely and easily be influenced by their friends.

1. Society

• Society plays an important role to in handling this problem among students. They can report to the school or related authorities if they see students loitering outside the school during schooling hours.
• Society can also join the awareness programme and campaigns to better understand this problem and work together with schools and governments to curb truancy.
• Government should organise more awareness talks and campaigns to create awareness among students and the public on truancy and the negative effects that it cause.

1. Conclusion

• In conclusion, they are various reasons why truancy is high among students. Students should always know who their friends are in making sure they are not in bad company.
• Truancy can only to bad impact for the students so, teacher, parents, society and government has to work hand in hand in handling this issue.  

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