School Absenteeism in Canada: Causes, Challenges, and Collaborative Solutions

School attendance, and rising rates of absenteeism, has been in the news much more often since COVID-19 (Long, 2024). We hear of students that ‘never returned’ after spending months physically away from schools and of students who fail to see the value of attending classes after completing courses from the comfort of their living room (Office of the Child and Youth Advocate NL, 2019).  

Despite attention in news media and concerns raised among school boards, very little research has been conducted on school absenteeism in Canada. The scope of the problem of school absenteeism is also difficult to measure. School boards collect their own attendance data within varying regulations. Some provinces, most recently Manitoba, are required or choose to publicly share their attendance data but most do not. A recent CBC news investigation found that chronic absenteeism (10% + missed days) is up significantly in many parts of the country. In one large Ontario school board, for example, the proportion of elementary-aged students absent 10% or more of the school year rose from 15% in 2018-2019, to 25% in 2021-2022 to 33% in 2022-2023. Similar increases were seen in one Maritime school board, with elementary students at 50% for 2022-2023 and rates of secondary students holding steady at rates of almost 70% chronically absent.  

Attending school matters for many reasons. Chronic absenteeism is a key early risk factor for school dropout and a host of other mental health, financial, and academic difficulties. School attendance problems often serve as a ‘canary in the coal mine’ for schools and mental health agencies, signaling that children are struggling at school, at home, or in the community long before other issues are noted (Kearney et al., 2023) Research has also shown that attendance problems have dynamic, compounding relationships with mental health and academic achievement issues, which often begin in elementary years (Klan et al., 2024).   

Sharing of school board and provincial data is one challenge in figuring out how often students are absent. Figuring out how to measure attendance is another. Schools and boards use a range of approaches to establishing a basic frequency of the physical presence of students in a school and/or a class. Is a student in class, or not? Some have attendance-specific staff tasked with this, others rely on software solutions, e-mails, phone calls, daily class counts etc. What we don’t know is: Do these approaches work well to capture the presence of students at school? Which work better? What about virtual learning options? How can we figure out if students are really online? Do these approaches to taking attendance provide insight into why students are absent in a reliable way? 

Differentiating Between Attendance Problems 

Increasingly, educators and researchers are recognizing that while tracking attendance is important in informing interventions, understanding more about the motivators or functions of absenteeism can be even more impactful. Heyne et al. (2019) analysed existing literature in the area and identified four typologies to differentiate between types of attendance problems. We’ve described these here without using the specific labels assigned by Heyne et al. because while common in research and some clinical realms these carry negative connotations in reality which can get in the way of supporting students and families.

(1) Avoiding school for anxiety-related reasons  

Emotional or anxiety-based absenteeism is seen as motivated largely by the student. For some students, their resistance relates to wanting to avoid the school context, because of social, emotional, or academic issues, while others are seeking positive experiences at home, such as spending time with family or playing video games. For example, John was bullied repeatedly and is now afraid to go to school. Hakim was struggling academically and knew that he has a high-stakes math test which he wanted to avoid. Minahil, a student with Autism, was home sick for three days and now is struggling to transition back to school, wanting to stay with her Mom and wanting to avoid having to catch up on work she is behind in. Tya has been struggling to manage her anxiety and often ends up awake for many hours in the night – she couldn’t imagine being able to handle a day at school given how worried and exhausted she feels. 

(2) Skipping school  

Skipping school, or what used to be called truancy, is seen as a choice on the part of the student and is more often applied to older students who are seen as having more control over whether or not they attend classes or school. Several home and school-based factors influence whether or not students choose to attend. For example, Francis felt disconnected from her peers at her new school and has been skipping classes to hang out with her old friends. Luna knows that her English teacher doesn’t usually report attendance to the office so she decides to skip her class and start her work shift early. Joël has become increasingly disengaged from school as financial pressures at home have built up and has dropped out. 

(3) Parent-supported absences 

In some cases, a parent or caregiver decides to excuse their child from school or to keep them home. They may do so for varied family or school-based reasons that are parent-motivated. For example, Amal was kept home to help care for younger siblings while her mother went to work. Charlie’s EA was away for a 2-day training program and his Mom knew that Charlie couldn’t handle the day without her so she kept him home. John’s parents needed him to translate for them during their medical appointments, so they pulled him out of school to help out. The relationship between Jane’s family and her school has become strained as they struggle to agree on how to best support her so her Dad is keeping her home and teaching her himself for now.  

(4) School-initiated absences 

This fourth typology is often missing from the attendance and absenteeism discussions altogether. For example, Jamie is on a modified schedule, attending 2 hours per day, because the school team believes that he can’t handle a full day without having physical outbursts. Farah was formally excluded from school for two weeks for safety reasons. Jamal was suspended for a week for coming to school under the influence of drugs, with cannabis in his backpack. Isabelle was de-registered from school after missing many days without the school being able to contact her or her family.    

Complex Interconnections 

While these four types of attendance problems are described separately, in the community-based research my colleagues and I have conducted as part of the Canadian School Attendance Partnership, we’ve heard a lot about the complex interplay between them (e.g. Klan et al., 2024; Rogers & Aglukark, 2024). Rarely does a student have attendance problems that can be captured in a single neat category and as our examples demonstrate, students who miss school are a heterogenous group.  

For example, John was bullied and had few friends. He regularly resisted attending school, feeling anxious and unsafe with few peer connections to support him. As he got older, his mother was less successful in convincing him to attend and he regularly missed days of school. When John did go to school, he usually found he was behind in several classes which increased his feelings of anxiety and disengagement. He was missing several key credits at this point. On one of these days, his teachers gave him the missed work to finish at home. When at home that evening, he grew increasingly frustrated and ripped up the sheets from one of his teachers. He talked about how dumb he was and how he wasn’t capable of finishing high school. His mother was worried about him and gave him the next day off to spend at home with her. John’s mother did get him to school the following day but he skipped his afternoon classes for the rest of the week, feeling overwhelmed and worried about bullying after school. The following week he agreed to attend school but smuggled in a small knife that he thought he could use to protect himself if need be and which would impress some of his classmates. It was discovered and he was suspended for the next two days. The cycle of refusal, withdrawal and truancy with occasional exclusion continued. 

Complex Interventions 

In our research, we’ve heard about the creative, multi-tiered and collaborative efforts that educators, administrators, school attendance counsellors, cultural liaisons, mental health professionals, families and students themselves are making to try to reduce absenteeism and reengage students to attend and participate in schooling (e.g. Alberta Government, 2015; Government of New Brunswick, 2024; Government of Nova Scotia, 2023). Many of these approaches are moving away from a deficit-based focus on absenteeism to one that emphasis presence, participation, and potential (OACAS, 2024). As described in a resource created by the Government of Manitoba, “the focus should always be on inviting students back and finding the necessary resources to support attendance” (2023, p. 13).  

A lack of nuanced data that provides early flags of days missed and communicates these to the right people at the right time is a barrier to effective intervention in many systems. The reasons for these missed days are inconsistently captured. Once a student has been identified as being chronically absent, many systems require that a team be brought together to create a re-entry and re-engagement plan that includes coordination with family and other services as required (e.g. Government of Nova Scotia, 2023).   

In the case of John, we can imagine several points where a more nuanced understanding of his absences might inform interventions that could change the trajectory of his absenteeism and increase his changes of school success, when he was younger and now in high school: 

Student miss school for a variety of reasons, some of which are well known to their families and educators and others that are more hidden or complex. Mental health, particularly anxiety, often plays a role in student absenteeism but social, academic, and family factors are also important to consider. Collecting and sharing data that goes beyond ‘present/absent’ or ‘excused/unexcused’ can help inform multi-faceted and tiered interventions within schools as well as broader research and policy that is needed in Canada to ensure that all students can experience success at school.  

References 

Alberta Government. (2015). Every student counts: Make the attendance connection. https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/16a4d876-db52-4cea-ab60-8743c76100d4/resource/0e6e7a41-f078-4376-ad3b-c4dd89f1beec/download/2015-every-student-counts-school-reference-guide-for-student-attendance.pdf  

Government of Manitoba. (2023). Safe and caring schools : a policy directive and action plan to enhance student presence and engagement. https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/docs/support/presence_engagement/student_presence_engagement.pdf  

Government of New Brunswick. (2024). Building a better education system: An action plan for implementing the long-term recommendations for New Brunswick’s anglophone education system. https://www2.gnb.ca/content/dam/gnb/Corporate/Promo/language/action-plan-for-long-term-recommendations.pdf   

Government of Nova Scotia. (2023). Student Attendance and Engagement Policy. https://www.ednet.ns.ca/docs/provincialstudentattendanceandengagementpolicy.pdf   

Heyne, D., Gren-Landell, M., Melvin, G., & Gentle-Genitty, C. (2019). Differentiation between school attendance problems: Why and how? Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 26(1), 8-34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2018.03.006 

Kearney, C. A., Dupont, R., Fensken, M., & Gonzálvez, C. (2023, August). School attendance problems and absenteeism as early warning signals: Review and implications for health-based protocols and school-based practices. In Frontiers in Education (Vol. 8, p. 1253595). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1253595 

Klan, A., Whitley, J., Krause, A., Rogers, M., Smith, D., McBrearty, N. (2024). An exploration of school attendance problems experienced by children receiving mental health services. Educational and Child Psychology, 41(1), 73-92. https://doi.org/10.53841/bpsecp.2024.41.1.73  

Long, C. (2024, April 23). Concerns raised about rate of absenteeism in Québèc schools. CTV News Montréal. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/concerns-raised-about-rate-of-absenteeism-in-quebec-schools-1.6859027 

Office of the Child and Youth Advocate. (2019). Chronic absenteeism: When children disappear. https://www.childandyouthadvocate.nl.ca/files/ChronicAbsenteeismJan2019.pdf  

Ontario Association for Counselling and Attendance Services. (2024). About us. https://www.oacas.ca/  

Rogers, M., & Aglukark, K. (2024). Supporting school attendance among Indigenous children and youth in Canada: A rapid review and call to action. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 19(1), 32-46.  

Meet the Expert(s)

Dr. Jess Whitley

Professor of Inclusive Education, University of Ottawa

Jess Whitley is a Professor of Inclusive Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. Her research focuses on school attendance and absenteeism, school inclusion/exclusion, menta...

Read More