Factors contributing to absenteeism among grade seven students in one specific school of Maldives / Shifza Zahir

Abstract

Absenteeism is identified as a huge concern which distracts the child's learning at school. Therefore, the government of Maldives highly accentuates on providing quality and equal learning opportunities for all the children by emphasizing the children to attend school regularly. Thus, this study seeks to learn the factors that cause students to get absent to school. Existing literatures on the factors that cause absenteeism among students suggest that a wide range of factors related to the individual child, the family background and the school contribute to absenteeism. This study investigates the factors that cause absenteeism among grade seven students in one specific school in the Maldives through a qualitative case study approach. Data was collected from a sample of six participants including three most frequently absent students, two teachers and the school counsellor through one-to-one semi-structured interviews. Data was analysed using the thematic analysis approach. In consistent with the previous researches, the findings of this study revealed that numerous factors associated with the individual child, family background and the school affect the students' attendance at school. The findings of this study revealed that numerous illnesses and disorders, poor academic performance, broken families, lack of parental love, care and support, teacher's attitude and personality and peer relationship can influence the students' attendance at school. Recommendations are made to work with students, parents, teachers and the school management together to minimize the causes of absenteeism through identifying the reasons behind it.