Why do children and young people avoid school? Special needs teacher Heinrich Ricking and his team are investigating the reasons behind school absenteeism.
Sometimes Prof Dr Heinrich Ricking feels like a detective. The expert in education for learning and behavioural disorders investigates why children and young people stay away from school. This is no easy task, as the reasons for truancy - as unexcused absences are scientifically termed - are extremely varied. "We usually have to delve deep to get to the heart of the problem," says Ricking. He, his colleagues and staff from the "School Absenteeism and Dropout" specialist group at the Institute of Special Needs Education and Rehabilitation are trying to get to the bottom of the issue in several research projects.
"The fact that around five per cent of children and young people only attend school irregularly or not at all is an indictment of a society whose most important resource is education," says Ricking. Frequent absences from school are often the first step towards social marginalisation, a life without academic appointments and an existence on the fringes of society. Experts estimate that society has to spend billions every year to deal with the consequences of truancy. Nevertheless, according to Ricking, the issue often flies under the radar in schools and politics. The Oldenburg researchers want to change this.
Truancy, avoidance, retention
The first step is to find out why a pupil no longer attends lessons. "Basically, we differentiate between three forms of truancy: truancy, anxiety-related avoidance behaviour and retention," explains Ricking. Truancy is probably the best-known form. Those who often "play hooky" have usually had many negative experiences beforehand, such as getting into trouble with teachers, constantly writing poor grades and repeatedly experiencing conflicts. "Students then avoid this situation and go to seemingly more attractive places in the morning, such as the shopping centre - often in the company of like-minded people," says the scientist. Supposedly simple truancy is not a trivial matter in the long run.
In the second form, anxiety-induced avoidance behaviour, children and young people stay away from school out of fear - fear of a maths test, an unfair teacher or bullying classmates. Those affected often find themselves in great distress, especially if other pupils are bullying them. "Bullying can have far-reaching psychosocial consequences, even leading to suicide," says Ricking. Teachers need to intervene vigorously here, but the number of unreported cases is quite high. It also happens time and again that parents or teachers fail to recognise the situation and dismiss the systematic bullying as "minor teasing".
The third basic form of truancy, "holding back", is not caused by the pupils, but by the parents. "There are very different problems behind this," explains Ricking. For example, there are children who have to help their parents in the morning -
because they are chronically ill and in need of help. In some families, children have to contribute to the household income. Other parents deliberately keep their children away because they reject the curriculum - often for religious reasons.
To get to the bottom of the causes, Ricking and his team, together with researchers from the University of Wuppertal, asked Krefeld secondary school pupils in years five to seven: Am I afraid of a job? Do I have stress with my teacher? Or: Do my parents want me to stay at home? "This basic orientation of motives gave us more clarity. It gave us the opportunity to delve deeper into the topic, for example through interviews with pupils, teachers or parents." With surprising results: experts had previously assumed that truancy was almost always the result of children taking the initiative and pretending to their parents that they were at school. However, the Krefeld study has now shown that up to 40 per cent of absences are known to the parents. "That is an enormously high figure, which totally surprised us," says Ricking.
According to the researcher, schools can also do a lot themselves to prevent this from happening in the first place. Keyword: monitoring. "Many schools in Germany don't even know how high their attendance rate is," Ricking found out. The UK is already much further ahead. There are so-called "attendance officers" - specialised employees who do nothing other than clarify the presence and absence of pupils and react in a planned manner. One of the Oldenburg projects is heading in exactly this direction: the scientists are accompanying several schools in the north-west that are trialling a monitoring system based on the English model.
Too few special needs teachers
A look at England also shows that it makes sense to tackle the problem at an early stage. Unlike in Germany, primary schools there have more than just teachers, secretaries and a caretaker. "30 to 35 per cent of the school staff are other teachers and therapists who do everything they can together to ensure that pupils are not left behind," says Ricking. Special needs teachers are still a rarity at German primary schools and the demand is far from being met.
The state government of Lower Saxony has now taken the first steps in the right direction: The study capacities at the Oldenburg Institute of Special Needs Education and Rehabilitation are being significantly expanded in light of the needs arising from inclusion. In a few years, three times as many young people will be trained as special needs teachers in Oldenburg as before. "We are also getting nine new professorships so that we can pursue many research approaches in an even more targeted manner," says Ricking. A specific study is already being planned, which will follow children from kindergarten through to secondary school. The researchers hope to find out which educational paths children take -
and to what extent this depends on the learning and living conditions they bring with them. This is an important basis for working out how general schools can adapt to challenging target groups in a preventative manner. "It's a time-consuming but very worthwhile endeavour," says Ricking - and hopes to launch the project in one to two years' time.