Students' Absenteeism and Truancy of Students in Government General Secondary Schools of Arada Sub-City
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Date
2016-06-01
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main objective of the study was to assess the student's absenteeism and truancy in Government general secondary schools in Arada sub city in Addis Ababa .Absenteeism andtruancy are two of the major causes that are obstacles to the teaching learning process. A descriptive design was used to conduct the study. To achieve the objective, the study used aqualitative as well as quantitative research method (mixed methodology). Questionnaires,interviews and Focused Group Discussion tools were used to collect the data. Of the studentsthat reside in the selected three schools, 200 students were selected at systematic random sampling and were provided with the questionnaires in the selected schools. And, to take part the focus group and personal interviews, from the aboverespondents a total of 70 people were selected using systematic random sampling method. The study used purposive sampling in selecting schools from the population to get sufficient information. The analysis of the data was conducted using mixed methods. The analysis of the first stage, filled questionnaires were analyzed by tallying and calculating the frequencies and for the second stage data was analyzed using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) techniques. And finally,comparison of quantitative and qualitative results was used. The results obtained in this research indicated that of the student respondents 85% were absent at least once and 65% were absent at least twice in the school year. The result alsoindicated that both students and adult respondents blame personal factors like lack of school value and school factors like unattractive school environment for the student's absence. As a conclusion, this study has shown that the problem of absenteeism is quite prevalent in the selected schools education landscape. The study also has shown the majority of the causes for students absenteeism and truancy stem from personal causes of poor grades, lack of value towards education and the Friday mentality and the school causes of unattractive school environment, lack of proper school recreational areas and discouraging subjects. This study also suggested that majority of the causes could be followed back to their root causes that deeply lie on their personal causes and the attributable school causes. And the major recommendations of the study were to empower students first, Make the school an attractive place to learn with enough sources of recreation and to conduct additional studies with larger and comparative samples to improve knowledge on the subject matter
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Students' Absenteeism and Truancy