A couple struggled to get their daughter to school. They tried everything, but the girl’s anxiety and fear only brought on fresh psychosomatic concerns to fuel her continued absences. 

This is a story that’s currently being repeated in many households, in many different countries, as schools continue to grapple with the issue of attendance.

In England, for instance, while recent government figures show that there has been a year-on-year rise in pupil attendance, severe absence remains on an “alarmingly upward trajectory”, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The picture is similar in the US.

England’s education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has recently urged schools and parents to “double down” on making sure children attend school.

So why is persistent absence such a problem? There is a multitude of reasons, but one key factor is a shift in the relationship that children and parents have with schools. My research in the last 25 years has pointed to this consistently. There has been a change not just in how students show up in schools, but how schools show up for them.

In 1996, an Indiana public school commissioner was cited in a paper by Dunlop as stating: “Our allegiance should go to the kids who want to be there and not the kids who don’t want to learn”. I would argue that the problem is not that students do not want to learn, but that our education systems no longer spend enough time thinking about their care.

To be clear, I do not mean to imply that individual teachers and school leaders do not care about their students, but that there are systemic problems driving the absence crisis we are seeing today.

The importance of social bonds

Today’s students report feeling unheard and uncared for, and parents are at a loss. The bond between families and schools has frayed, and the consequences are showing up in attendance data and in rising rates of youth disengagement.

In any other system where people do not feel supported, we see them either choosing to work against that system or voting with their feet and leaving it. We avoid things that are painful and uncomfortable. This is what is happening in our schools.

It’s something we should all be concerned about, because research shows that school disengagement directly correlates to delinquency and youth violence.

Much of my work is underpinned by Travis Hirschi’s 1969 theory of social control, which is a major theory in understanding delinquent behaviours. It suggests that the stronger an individual’s social bonds (to family and other community groups), the less likely that individual is to commit crime.

Hirschi approached social bonds as a two-phase process, the first phase being our connections to people, and the second being how we use the strength of those connections to create relationships. He examined the role of these two phases in delinquency formation and determined that delinquency is driven not just by individual feelings and emotions, but by a lack of opportunities to be oneself within established climates and structural arenas.

This work suggests that, in order to improve attendance rates, schools must first move beyond punitive measures and focus instead on prevention and early intervention. Data shows that positive engagement - especially when families are involved - improves attendance and attainment.

By measuring school climate and valuing student voice, schools can rebuild trust and offer the care young people need to thrive.

How, then, should they go about this? Over the course of 15 years, I developed a tool to help: the Perception of School Social Bonding (PSSB) instrument.

A measure of ‘school bonding’

“School bonding” refers to the connections students have with their schools and with various aspects of their academic environments, with an emphasis on close affective relationships and investment in doing well at school.

The PSSB, endorsed by the American Psychological Association (APA), is a 10-item self-report instrument with three sub-scales measuring different aspects of student school bonding - attachment, involvement and belief. Higher scores across these scales indicate a greater level of perceived school bonding.

The instrument is also the focus of a new international pilot study aiming to understand more about how social environments influence youth behaviour.

The study, led by Dr Lukasz Szwejka of Jagiellonian University in Poland, will analyse the experiences of young people placed in residential care institutions (such as rehabilitation centres or correctional facilities) in four countries: Poland, Uzbekistan, Sri Lanka and England.

Working with four other academic institutions - University of Rzeszow in Poland; Samarkand State University in Uzbekistan; Liverpool John Moores University in the UK; and the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka - the study will test an integrated model of select criminological theories, using the PSSB to measure students’ emotional connection, involvement and beliefs about school.

The hypothesis is that the integrated model will better explain variance in juvenile delinquency than any single-factor model. Additionally, we hypothesise that the predictive power of these models will differ across cultures.

For example, family bonds and social control mechanisms are expected to have a stronger protective role in Poland and Sri Lanka, reflecting the cultural importance of family and community. Conversely, in the UK, individual-level factors such as self-control may play a larger role in predicting delinquency. In Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, peer influence and collective environments may exert a stronger influence on youth delinquency as compared with more individualistic societies.

‘No quick fix’

When it comes to improving school attendance, we need better and more consistent data to compare and contrast the international picture, helping us to identify the similarities and differences that will support collaborative action.

In the meantime, schools must be clear on their roles. Prevention and early intervention are important. Leaders must learn how to measure the school climate and classify the perceptions of students. They must include student voices in programs and interventions, and offer proactive activities to involve parents and deter students from abandoning places they feel do not serve them well. The PSSB can be a useful starting point for this work.

There is no quick fix for attendance, but my research suggests that a focus on school bonding - and the data that informs it - can help schools begin to take control of the situation.

Dr Carolyn Gentle-Genitty is dean of Founder’s College at Butler University