Factors influencing absenteeism in Lower Primary schools of Chibombo District in Central Province of Zambia.
- June 15, 2022
- Posted by: rsispostadmin
- Categories: Education, IJRSI
International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume IX, Issue V, May 2022 | ISSN 2321–2705
Lufeyo Chitondo
Rockview University, Lusaka, Zambia
Abstract: Absenteeism is the practice of regularly staying away from work or school without good reasons while school absenteeism is learners’ habit of staying away from school without providing genuine reasons for not attending classes and has negative effects on learners’ academic performance. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess factors influencing absenteeism in Zambian schools. Four Head teachers, 16 teachers and 80 learners from the four lower primary schools in Chibombo district were sampled for the study. Data was collected using questionnaires and in-depth interviews to allow the researcher a platform to ask open-response questions and to explore the respondents’ perspectives about the factors influencing absenteeism in schools. The data was analyzed by use of the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) computer package. The study revealed factors such as; attitude, poor infrastructure, contact time, peer pressure, inferiority complex, underage, health, poor teaching methods, dual language, labeling, poverty have a negative or detrimental effect on learners’ academic performance. The study recommended that the Government through the Ministry of Education should come up with national wide education campaign programmes in school through school related activities to educate parents on the value of education for pupils.
Key words: Absenteeism, Academic performance, effects, factors, learners’ habit.
I.INTRODUCTION
Regular attendance at school is essential for the learners’ academic achievements as well as for language and social developments and the basic assumption of the education system is that learners regularly attend school (Balfauz and Byrnes, 2018).
Absenteeism refers to missed instructional days that may be excused, unexcused or as a result of disciplinary removal from school (Jordan and Miller, 2017). Absenteeism has however, been linked to multiple negative academic and social outcomes (Claessens et al., 2015). In addition, learner absenteeism impacts significantly on a variety of learner outcomes such as reading achievement, drop-out rate and discipline (Balvin and Ehrhch, 2018). As a result, learners with school attendance problems report lower academic efficacy, poor academic performance, more anxiety, more symptoms of depression and less self-esteem (Fan and Walters, 2014).
