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Truancy in Europe: Does the type of educational system matter?
Author(s) -
Keppens Gil,
Spruyt Bram
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
european journal of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.577
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1465-3435
pISSN - 0141-8211
DOI - 10.1111/ejed.12282
Subject(s) - truancy , psychology , unemployment , demographic economics , economic growth , criminology , economics
Truancy is known to: Hamper academic achievement, predict a range of school‐related problems and cause early school leaving. Hence, the development and implementation of measures to tackle truancy are considered as important strategies to prevent early school leaving in Europe. Despite this, there is almost no comparative research which studies variation in truancy rates. This article relies on PISA 2012 data from 24 European countries to empirically answer two questions: (1) To what degree do truancy rates vary cross‐nationally? and (2) Do these differences in truancy rates relate to characteristics of the educational system? We found that between‐country truancy rates varied more than differences in early school leaving. Moreover, even after taking into account control variables such as economic development and youth unemployment rates, the ways in which educational systems select and group pupils are closely related to truancy rates.