Children are missing more and more school days. Ontario has a plan to fix that, but not everyone’s happy

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An OECD report published this month, citing data it collected from 35 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas, said that “post-COVID, growing concerns emerged across countries that some learners were struggling to re-engage with school attendance, further increasing attention to the need for effective prevention and response strategies.”

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The report also noted how absenteeism can be habit forming: “In New Zealand, chronically absent students are five times more likely to miss school again the following year,” it says. In the United Kingdom, more than 80 per cent of the students who missed more than 28 days of school in the 2021-22 year remained “persistently absent in 2022-23. And in Finland, the report says students who missed more than 20 per cent of school days in Grade 6 continued to miss classes above that rate through the rest of their education.

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The reason this is a problem is simple: school attendance is a significant factor in student success.

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“Attendance is very, very important for education,” says Kelly Gallagher-Mackay, a professor at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University who studies education policy. “You can’t learn if you don’t show up. It is a precondition to educational success.”

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She notes that there is plenty of evidence that shows attendance isn’t just a simple way to measure connection to school, it’s also a strong indicator of academic engagement and “just generally being a part of school life.”

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The academic literature on the importance of attendance is extensive. Studies have found that poor attendance can severely impact reading proficiency by Grade 3, that chronic absenteeism will negatively affect grades — even when absences are excused — and that attendance levels in Grade 9 are a better predictor of graduation rates than even Grade 8 test scores.

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Perhaps the simplest statement comes from the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics: “Students who attend school regularly have been shown to achieve at higher levels than students who do not have regular attendance.”

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But while increased classroom time is a worthy goal, Gallagher-Mackay has concerns with the Ontario plan, which could be characterized as all stick, no carrot.

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Attendance and participation will be worth 15 per cent of a student’s marks in Grades 9 and 10 next year, and 10 per cent in Grades 11 and 12. (Absences for legitimate illness, or while participating in school activities like sports or music, will remain acceptable. Attendance grades will be lowered only due to unexcused absences.)

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“The fact that our first instinct is to say, ‘We’re going to take marks off,’ is really problematic,” Gallagher-Mackay says. “It increases the chance (that a student will)  fail, and what we know is that failing a course in Grade 9 or 10 is one of the best predictors of dropout. It is not what we want.

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To increase the negative pressure on Grade 9, she says, is “contrary to 20 years of student success policy.”

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While there is little doubt that the pandemic exacerbated attendance problems system-wide, it’s a complex issue that has a host of contributing factors. Attendance rates tend to be lower in lower-income areas, and students who are struggling are often less motivated to go to school. Once they fall behind, that issue only accelerates as increased absences contribute to lower grades and the cycle gets worse.

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Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra: “I think this is an important change and it absolutely reflects what teachers and high-school teachers have told me would help them get better management of their classrooms.” Photo by Screenshot/Government of Ontario

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Gallagher-Mackay says that ideally schools would identify frequent absences early and take more of a social-work type approach with students to understand and address the reasons why they are skipping school.

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But even relatively benign attempts at improving attendance can receive pushback. When an elementary school in Bracebridge, in Ontario’s Muskoka region, announced an “Attendance Awareness Initiative” in March, it resulted in headlines about parents “voicing concerns” over the program. One report quoted a parent at the school who worried that encouraging improved attendance without addressing the reasons for absences could “lead to higher levels of burnout or disengagement.”