In many countries, truancy* is a worrying problem for both parents and educators. What are the causes of truancy, and what may be the effects on the child and the wider community?

Truancy is an activity which some children regard as amusing or even exciting, but which can have serious impacts on their future and on society as a whole. I can identify two main causes

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and three broad effects. Perhaps the main cause is a sense of boredom or frustration with school itself,

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instance,

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with the content, pace or organisation of the lessons.

This

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can be seen in the way that pupils often avoid certain lessons but not others, suggesting that specific subjects or teachers are the personal grievance . Another factor may frequently be peer pressure, meaning that pupils feel obliged to play truant because some of their peers or friends are doing

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. We can see that the child’s desire to be popular among a peer group may be higher than the motivation to study and progress. Turning to possible effects, the tendency to underperform academically is probably the most serious impact on a pupil’s life, leading to poor exam results and weak career progression in later life. Another effect may be the temptation to participate in petty crime or antisocial behaviour

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the child is unsupervised, potentially opening a pathway into more serious crimes later on.

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, a child who commits vandalism may progress to theft and robbery, a trend we see in some major South American cities

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as Rio or Buenos Aires.

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issue of crime is probably the third major effect, and one that impacts

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the community as a whole.

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, children playing truant may cause damage, drop litter, intimidate elderly people and commit other acts which spread a sense of instability and anxiety, even though the financial impact is low.

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, the causes of truancy generally relate to

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of challenge or peer pressures,

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the effects are seen in individual underachievement and in minor crime against the community as a whole.