If students at your school are not attending classes or coming to school at all, they may be engaging in school refusal. Understanding what school refusal is, as well as the functions behind it, is key to evaluation and a collaborative school-home approach to intervention.

School refusal is a serious problem that negatively affects academic performance, connection to school, and socioemotional well-being of students. Numerous scientific works have suggested that school refusal is associated with internalizing problems. However, it is necessary to determine how this condition may affect certain academic variables,…

School attendance is an ongoing concern for administrators, particularly in middle level and high school. Frequent absences affect student learning, test scores, and social development. Absenteeism is often the result of emotional disorders, such as anxiety or depression. Administrators who understand the causes of school refusal behavior and are…

Discusses the symptoms, causes, effects, and treatment of school phobia. (CM)

The goal of the present research was to determine the factor structure of anxiety in a collegiate population. The self-report instrument found useful with elementary students was slightly modified and administered to the college students. Only slight discrepancies appeared between the elementary data and the college data. (Author)

Evidence from this study suggests that if the sample size is large and if economic barriers to treatment are not present, one finds that intelligence is distributed among school phobics as it is distributed in the general population. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (Author)

This article outlines the critical variables of school phobia in terms of several different theoretical explanations, makes comparisons where appropriate, and describes the treatment modes that have resulted from theory and research. (Author)

As in the case described, cases of school phobia can frequently be managed by school personnel with the aid of a consultant. Such treatment is often most effective in the original arena, the school, rather than in an office far removed from the source of the anxiety. (Author)

Two studies examined age and sex differences in scores on Dunn's School Anxiety Questionnaire and on "worry-emotionality" questionnaire for third through eighth graders. Data support the multidimensional approach to the study of school anxiety. (GO)

This paper focuses on two aspects of the management of early adolescent school phobia: working out an attendance contract with the student and with the school, and the role of the school in facilitating a student's early return to school. (Author/RK)

The symptoms of school phobia were found to be student withdrawal, unwillingness of the student to leave the mother, being either the oldest child of the family or the last one left at home, and having an impulsive, violent, sadistic philandering father. Five adolescents are examined in detail and a proposal is made that adolescence is a time…

Described are the systematic reinforcing and shaping procedures used by a school principal to modify an 11-year-old child's phobic fear of the classroom. The child's class attendance significantly increased as a consequence of the procedures. (Author/SDH)

This article reviews the two main causes of phobia and presents a series of case studies, from Toronto school files, which were satisfactorily handled by psychiatric help, either in or outside the school setting. (CJ)

Signs of school anxiety are described, and parents are advised about ways to help their children with this problem. Anxiety may arise when children start to school, change schools, or enter college and may also be triggered by a physical illness or family problem. (PP)