Chronic Absenteeism Surges in Irish Schools Post-Covid, as State Struggles to Rebuild Attendance Norms

Education in Ireland is compulsory for children from the age of six to 16. Despite this, Ireland’s Irish Times newspaper recently reported that children in Ireland are missing school at an alarming rate.

While of course there has always been a certain level of absenteeism in schools in Ireland, as elsewhere, the situation post-Covid pandemic has escalated to a disturbing degree.

Indeed, available data suggests that the pre-pandemic baseline saw about 11.6% of primary school students and 15% of post-primary students missed 20 or more school days annually. Missing 20 days or more is considered a threshold for chronic absenteeism when calculated against Ireland’s 183-day school year.

However, Irelands Child and Family Agency, Tusla, in a statement to the Irish Times confirmed that it has commenced projects to better understand the issue of rising absenteeism, after it found that referrals to an education welfare officer for chronic absenteeism have risen year-on-year, with 6,771 in the 2021-22 school year and 8,042 in the 2023-24 school year.

This is not reflected in countries like Sweden where schools were kept open longer and which have subsequently reported lower absenteeism spikes compared to nations with extended closures, such as Italy, Spain, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. One of the reasons put forward for this is EU states zealous pursuit of quarantine rules led to an increased sense of parental caution.

The causes of this phenomenon are complex. The Irish Times reporting referred to a UK Study by the policy research agency Public First, which utilised outcomes from focus group conversations with parents from different backgrounds across the country. One of the most alarming findings concluded that many parents in England no longer subscribe to the view that their children need to be in school full-time. Public first described this as “a seismic shift” in attitudes to attendance since the pandemic and a rupturing of the social contract between schools and families.

It worth observing, as PhD research conducted by Sinead Flynn has made clear that there has much debate on the most appropriate definition for school absenteeism.

According to Flynn, there appears to be a number of interpretations of this term including truancy, school refusal, school drop-out, authorised absences and unauthorised absences. School refusal is a particular distinct category as it often reflects a condition characterised a fear of separation from parents, emotional upset, and possible anti-social tendencies, as noted by Berg, and others.

At the legislative level the issue of absenteeism in Ireland is guided by provisions within the Education (Welfare) Act 2000.

This Act places a number of legal requirements upon schools including an obligation under section 21 which stipulates that every recognised school (primary and post-primary) must keep a register of all enrolled students and record their daily attendance. Schools must also document the reasons for absences when provided.

Section 21(6) of the Act requires schools to report to the Tusla Education Support Service (TESS), formerly the National Educational Welfare Board, when a student misses 20 or more school days in a school year, regardless of whether the absences are explained or unexplained.

TESS is generally well-regarded in Irelands education sector and may in fact be one of the very few areas of the Child and Family Agency’s work that has not been on the receiving end of stinging criticism over the course of the last number of years.

The primary initiative that Tusla implements to address, prevent and monitor absenteeism is its School Completion Programme (SCP).

As described by the Agency, the SCP is a support programme targeted at primary and post primary students who have been identified as vulnerable to early school leaving, or who have already left school and have not successfully transferred to an alternative – a learning site such as Youthreach, Community Training Centre, etc or employment.

The SCP is a support project, under the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools (DEIS) Programme, which attempts to ensure young person complete the leaving certificate, or an equivalent qualification, or find a suitable level of educational attainment which enables them to transition into further education, training or employment.

TESS says that there are approximately 122 SCP projects. These projects are linked to 467 primary and 222 post-primary schools and have annual programme funding of €24.7m.

The SCP is not however a standalone project. It operates in conjunction with the Home School Community Liaison (HSCL) Scheme and the Educational Welfare Service. All three strands share the same national outcomes:

Improved Attendance

Improved Participation

Improved Retention

This followed a broad acceptance by researchers in the education field that there was a clear need for a national and multi-agency approach to deal with inequality and early school leaving.

Studies on the need to develop strategies to combat school absenteeism from an educational perspective are extensive and have formed part of the Irish debate for the last number of decades. This includes a prominent study by Ireland’s Economic and Social Research Institute published in 2013, Persistent absenteeism among Irish primary school pupils.

This study was notable because it focused on young children (aged 9 years) who were until then underrepresented in the research literature which tended to concentrate on secondary schools and adolescents.

But as the ESRI noted, patterns of non-attendance often get established earlier in a student’s educational career and often lies undetected before becoming more entrenched.

Studies on the impact of absenteeism on children’s mental health have not been so prominent. As Sinead Flynn has observed, it is crucial that this deficit is addressed as the factors contributing to a lack of school attendance that emerged from her research included grief at the loss of a parent, a parent or significant adult who was suffering with mental health issues, the impact of trauma, the impact of bullying and the significance of peer relationships for young people.

There can also be severe legal repercussions for parents or guardians who are found to have taken insufficient action to ensure a child attends school, which is a legal requirement, as noted above.

Recent information supplied in response to a parliamentary question to Irelands Minister for Education revealed that the statutory Educational Welfare Service which operates under the Education (Welfare) Act, 2000, have taken a significant number of legal actions for non-attendance at school. This action is only taken by the Educational Welfare Service when all other steps have failed and when a School Attendance Notice (SAN) has been issued.

The number of court-imposed penalties on foot of failure to comply with the requirements of school attendance notices in each of the past five years is provided below:

What is clear from the data collated by Ireland’s Child and Family Agency is that the number of children impacted by absenteeism does not appear to be reducing. In fact it is growing year on year.  While this is a source of major concern there are positive indications that the School Completion Programme and the determination of school leaders to work constructively with parents and pupils to address this phenomenon may yet bear positive fruit. But this can only happen if the SCP is sufficiently funded and resourced. At present this is not happening.

In fact, as the Irish Times has noted in its own reporting, while funding levels for the programme have increased since 2016, they do not yet match the funding levels in place before the 2008 recession.