Truancy is known to: Hamper academic achievement, predict a range of school-related problems and cause early school leaving. Hence, the development and implementation of measures to tackle truancy are considered as important strategies to prevent early school leaving in Europe. Despite this, there is almost no comparative research which studies…

This study contributes to the literature on school-based strategies to prevent and reduce truancy by investigating the relationship between an authoritative school climate and class skipping. We use data from The Programme for International Student Assessment with 15-year-old pupils (N = 2,539) in secondary education in Flanders, the…

Background: While, an extensive literature reveals the many risk factors associated with truancy, less is known about the way truancy develops, intensifies and persists. In recent years, authors have argued that the development of truancy should not be understood as an individual phenomenon, but as a process of complex interactions between the…

The negative consequences of truancy for individuals, schools, communities and society in the short and long term are well documented. However, empirical research on truancy often takes only the frequency of the absence into account. As a consequence, truancy research has been dominated by the comparison of characteristics of truants with…

During the past years, combating truancy has been high on the political agenda. However, throughout Europe one can observe that despite the numerous action plans and anti-truancy measures, truancy rates continue to rise. In this article, we focus on Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium) as a case study to get a better grip on the mismatch…