Truant more correctly describes youth who refuse to attend school primarily because extramural social rewards are greater than those available at school.

Reasons why pupils miss school:

• Gradual development of non-attendance after history of absences
• Child is a poor and uninterested student
• Child finds community more rewarding than school or home
• Family is unaware of truancy
• Non-attendance is sporadic
• Child is independent
• Child is older
• Child is apathetic and unperturbed when faced with attending school

Youth & Family Counseling Services is there to help when a child is having problems like truancy. The STAR program at the agency will help a family cope with truancy issues

As a parent, what can I do to help?

• Make sure that your child goes to school regularly, arrives on time and keeps to the rules of going to all lessons. Start these good habits at an early age, while your child is in primary school.
• If your child starts missing school, help the school to put things right. Make sure your child understands that you do not approve of him or her missing school.
• If your child is ill, contact the school on the first day of your child’s illness. Staff will be concerned if they do not hear anything.
• If your child is ever off school, you must tell the school why. Do this by following the arrangements made by the school.
• If you want permission for your child to miss school, for example because of a special occasion such as a wedding, you should ask for permission well in advance and give full details.
• Do not expect the school to agree to shopping trips during school hours.
• Take an interest in your child’s schoolwork.
• Support the school in its efforts to control bad behavior.

Involve parents in all truancy prevention activities
Parents play the fundamental role in the education of their children. This applies to every family regardless of the parents’ station in life, their income, or their educational background. Nobody else commands greater influence in getting a young person to go to school every day and recognizing how good education can define his or her future.

For families and schools to work together to solve problems like truancy, there must be mutual trust and communication. Many truancy programs contain components which provide intensive monitoring, counseling and other family-strengthening services to truants and their families. Schools can help by being "family-friendly" and encouraging teachers and parents to make regular contact before problems arise. Schools may want to consider arranging convenient times and neutral settings for parent meetings, starting homework hotlines, training teachers to work with parents, hiring or appointing a parent liaison and giving parents a voice in school decisions.