1 in 34 junior high school students skipping at least 30 days of school per year

The Mainichi Shimbun
August 8, 2008
Source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080808p2a00m0na006000c.html

The number of elementary and junior high school students skipping school for more than 29 days increased to 129,254 in 2008, 1.9 percent more than last year, according to a government survey.

The number of junior high school students skipping school for at least 30 days of the year accounted for 2.91 percent of all students, meaning one in 34 were away from school for at least 30 days.

The figures were based on a survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on 33,680 national, public and private elementary and junior high schools across Japan. The survey defined truant students as those who were absent from school for at least 30 days of the year for reasons other than medical or financial.

A total of 23,926 students fell under this definition, a 0.4 percent increase from the previous school year. The corresponding number of junior high school students increased 2.2 percent to reach 105,328 students.

The ratio of elementary school students not attending school for at least 30 days of the year was one in 298 students, or 0.34 percent of all students.

The percentage of students citing bullying as the reason they stayed away from school rose by 0.3 percentage points to reach 3.5 percent, and 18.4 percent said relationships between friends (excluding bullying), marking a 2.8 percent increase.

For the first time this year, prefectural education boards were asked to choose from 10 reasons to explain the increase in the number of children not attending school, with multiple answers permitted.

The top reason given was an increase in the number of students unable to make friends, at 93 percent. Eighty-two percent said poor home education had left students without basic living skills, leading them to play truant. Sixty-five percent gave a lack of home discipline as the reason.

"We want to improve dialogue with truant children and their parents by continuing to appoint school counselors and utilizing the new school social worker system that began this year," an Education Ministry official commenting on the results said.

(Mainichi Japan) August 8, 2008

High school truants' study outside to count

The Japan Times
Friday, Aug. 8, 2008
Source: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080808a4.html

Kyodo News--The education ministry plans to accept the attendance of high school truants who are studying at out-of-school institutions as having attended their regular schools, ministry sources said Thursday.

The move is part of an effort to provide support for high school truants and represents a turnaround for a ministry that until now has shunned such a policy on grounds that truants technically do not exist in high schools because attendance is not compulsory.

Only elementary and junior high schools are compulsory, but most junior high graduates go to high school.

Under the plan, high school principals or boards of education will have ultimate discretion over whether to regard those students as having attended their regular schools.

The ministry has already introduced a similar policy for elementary and junior high school students attending so-called free schools and other out-of-school institutions since 1992, when the number of elementary and junior high school truants topped 70,000.

Such unregistered private schools generally offer academic and counseling support for truants, although their educational services vary.

In the 2006 school year through March 2007, about 17,000 elementary and junior high school students attending those unofficial schools were regarded as having attended legitimately.

For students to receive guidance and instructions at free schools and have their attendance counted, the ministry has set such conditions as maintaining sufficient coordination between their original schools and parents.

The Japan Times
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