Who is allowed to stay at home during school hours? An analysis of school withdrawal

ABSTRACT

The rise of unexcused school absenteeism is an international phenomenon, and pupils with unexcused absenteeism are a highly heterogeneous group. Our study focuses on this heterogeneity by studying school withdrawal: absences not concealed from the parents, and which are attributable to there being little or no parental effort to get the pupil to school (passive school withdrawal) or to parental effort to keep the pupil at home (active school withdrawal). Our study of 644 pupils aged between 14 and 21 shows that both forms of school withdrawal are more prevalent among pupils with lower parental school involvement. Passive school withdrawal is more common among pupils from a single-parent family, and our findings also suggest that it occurs more often if the parents have a laissez-faire parenting style. Active school withdrawal is more prevalent amongst girls and students from a non-migrant background. In the conclusion, we elaborate on the implications of our findings for theory and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• School absenteeism
• school attendance
• school withdrawal
• truancy
• parental school involvement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Research Foundation Flanders FWO, under Grant FWOTM1136.

Notes on contributors

E. H. Kruithof

E. H. Kruithof is PhD fellow fundamental research at FWO Flanders and junior researcher at the department of sociology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium). He obtained a master’s degree in sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and joined research group Interface demography in 2021. In 2022, he obtained a master’s in teaching in social sciences at the same university. His main research interests include intergenerational social mobility, social stratification and sociology of education.

G. Keppens

G. Keppens is assistant professor in Learning Sciences at the Department of Sociology at Tilburg University. He obtained his master’s degree in sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and joined the TOR research group in September 2012 where he obtained his PhD in Sociology with a dissertation on school disengagement among youth with school attendance problems. Gil has been involved for more than 9 years in research on student learning, with a special focus on behaviour problems, such as school engagement, school dropout and school absenteeism. His main research interests include sociology of education, sociology of youth, and educational policy research with a focus on equity and diversity issues.