Prevalence and Problems of Truancy among Seco...

Prevalence and Problems of Truancy among Secondary School Students in Hoshiarpur District – A Case Study

Author Name : Dr. Sushil Kumar Singh

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to find out the level of prevalence of truancy at present time among the secondary school students, to identify the various factors responsible for causing and to suggest measures that could help preventing truancy among school students. The study was a multi-case study which was conducted on 128 subjects i.e. parents, teachers, students and their peers. The data was collected by using purposive sampling technique from the Government schools of four administrative blocks of Hoshiarpur district of Punjab. i.e. Dasuya, Mukerian, Hoshiarpur and Garhshankar. To collect the relevant information for the present study, the investigator used open-ended interview schedules separately for each subject. Also to explore the level of prevalence of truancy the attendance record of the students was collected from the district education office of Hoshiarpur. It has been found that over all prevalence of truancy was 4.72% among the secondary school students of district Hoshiarpur. The block-wise results showed that the level of prevalence of truancy was higher in rural area (5.54%) as compared to the urban area (4.25) of district Hoshiarpur i.e. Prevalence of truancy was observed maximum in class 11th and 12th in Garhshankar block (5.9%) and minimum in Dasuya block (1.9%). Various factors responsible for causing truancy were detected as (i) Poverty (ii) Illiteracy of the parents (iii) Large size of the families (iv) Irresponsible behaviour of the parents towards their children (v) Over protection of children by parents. (vi) Parents’ negative attitude towards education (vii) Single parent or without parents children (viii) Inadequate environment at home (ix) Fathers’ immigration to foreign country (x) To take care of siblings at home. From all these results it can be concluded that the main cause of prevalence of truancy may be the lack of awareness among rural parents. Thus, to eradicate this problem the responsibility lies on the education department for organizing educational awareness programmes for general public in rural areas and establishing guidance and counseling cells to help students resolve their personal and educational problems. Such endeavours would certainly help in controlling the problem of truancy in rural as well as urban areas.