School refusal

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Truancy (including school distance , school absenteeism , Nichtbeschulbarkeit ) or colloquially truancy in countries where it compulsory education are, are forms of absenteeism among students who through the unexcused absence in the school (particularly of school-age students) anzweifelbares excused absence from school (e.g. by notifying parents or doctors of illness in the case of minor or faked illnesses) or showing passive refusal (e.g. by not participating in class, pursuing non-class activities during class or disrupting class ).

Strictly speaking, a distinction must be made between refusal to attend school and refusal to attend classes despite physical participation in class. A distinction must also be made between missed lessons that can be traced back to "unauthorized" decisions by the student and / or his parents at certain individual times, and regularly recurring or long-term absence from lessons.

species

A distinction is made between truancy, truancy and withholding. In the case of refusal to attend school, for example, the student simulates an illness so that the parents excuse him from going to school. A truancy occurs when the pupil starts to walk to school , but instead goes to a playground, for example . When holding back the take parents the initiative and keep their school willing child from school.

A further distinction is made as to whether a student deliberately and deliberately refuses to go to school over a longer period of time (so-called intentional refusal to attend school , school criticism ) or decides from day to day to stay away from school (so-called functional refusal to attend school ).

Motifs

Psychological problems of students

The little truant
painting by Anton Ebert 1885

There are many reasons for functional school refusal. In primary school children it can be the fear of leaving the familiar parental home. Often students refuse school to escape the stress of pressure to perform and school grades. Some students refuse to school but also from fear of school for teachers or classmates. Often negative experiences of the child, such as bullying at school , fear of class work , boredom or test anxiety reason for such a decision. Another reason can be too little or too little work . So are gifted (students with an IQ got over 130), which initially always very good grades to objectors as a protest against the perceived boredom.

Refusal to attend school may obtain certificates from doctors or their parents and thus often distract from the psychological causes of refusal to attend school.

Basic parent dissatisfaction

Some parents consider the obligation to have their child taught by “strangers” as an illegitimate interference with their parental rights and reject compulsory education. Parents who are oriented towards children's rights want to enable their child to grow up according to their own plan and not have to endure unnecessary boredom, frustration, or excessive or insufficient demands in school lessons. In these cases, school refusal always results from an express wish of the child or from a joint decision by parents and child. Both groups of parents prefer to organize their children's lessons themselves through home schooling or some other form of instruction outside of school.

Certain strictly religious parents do not want their children e.g. Take , for example, sex education or swimming lessons because they consider it harmful or incompatible with their culture or religion. They discourage their children from attending the class in question.

Economic benefit calculations

In particular, a few days before school holidays, the “unauthorized” absence of students from class increases. When school grades have been determined and, in the opinion of students and parents, lessons are only taking place pro forma, many see no reason why they should not take advantage of the lower prices for holiday offers in the preseason, as the higher demand for holiday offers in a country immediately after the start of the holiday leads to price increases.

In families where there are problems with the reconciliation of family and professional duties of the parents, a seemingly "simple" solution is to let older siblings supervise their brother or sister during school hours. Some families also like to use older children to replace the injured or ill person who is primarily responsible for running the family household. This phenomenon often occurs in conjunction with the lack of confidence mentioned below that the child in question could have good career prospects with regular, more ambitious school attendance.

"Educational distance"

Parents who are not convinced that a good education is important for the future life of their children, or who do not believe that their children have one, often lack an awareness of the fact that they do not prevent their children from being absent from class good education. This mentality is often assessed as a result of so-called “ educational disabilities ”.

In Turkey it was not until 1997 that the possibility of legally not attending school after completing grade 5 was abolished; Only this year was the eight-year compulsory education introduced in Turkey. As a result, many parents of students of Turkish origin were already legally employed at the age of eleven or were employed as full-time domestic help. Comparable experiences made by parents from other countries of origin often mean that people with a migration background do not consider their children's missed lessons in the secondary education sector in German schools to be problematic.

Collective student protests

Since August 20, 2018, demonstrations by the global school and student initiative Fridays for Future have been taking place regularly on Fridays . The starting point was the decision of the currently 16-year-old student Greta Thunberg in Stockholm to “strike” at classes every Friday until the Swedish government complies with the Paris Agreement on Climate Protection . In Germany alone, around 25,000 young people took part in the rallies at 50 locations on January 18, 2019 during regular class hours. The activists justify their unauthorized absence from classes with the statement: “Even if we miss lessons for this, the existential question of the climate crisis is more than worth to us. Because climate change is not waiting for our graduation. Our strike is not directed against the school, the university or against teachers. ”Since the students use a service through the lessons , the school strike is not a strike , but a boycott .

In a brief report from March 2019 on behalf of the Solarenergie-Förderverein Deutschland , Felix Ekardt deals with the limits of the (German) administrative offense law with regard to school absences as part of the Fridays for Future movement.

Countermeasures

Psychologists and educators are increasingly concerned with the phenomenon of school refusal at specialist conferences and in working groups of the ministries of education . In addition, there are various school replacement projects , the aim of which is to enable school refusal to attend school through a suitable learning environment and individual support, but which at the same time make integration impossible.

In addition, one approach to combating school refusal is to use a different social and educational policy to mitigate, if possible even to eliminate, the factors that lead to educational disadvantage.

National

Germany

In July / August 2005, courts in East Westphalia withdrew custody of some Baptist parents with regard to school matters. The families anticipated a possible demonstration of the children at school by the police after the end of the summer vacation by de-registering their children in Germany and re-registering them in Austria or Belgium , where schooling is not compulsory but only compulsory education . According to the Federal Court of Justice, parents are also not entitled to withdraw their children from compulsory schooling “if individual teaching content or methods of the school conflict with their beliefs”.

A family who fled Baden-Württemberg to the USA in 2008 received asylum there for reasons of religious persecution in Germany.

In April 2010, a total of more than 5,400 signatories submitted a petition to the German Bundestag, with the aim of exempting parents who teach their children at home. The petition process is still ongoing (as of October 2011).

Risk behavior

A representative study for Germany with more than 44,000 adolescents in ninth grade showed that adolescents who had previously refused to attend school at least once in their life were more likely to indulge in binge drinking in the last four weeks of the survey than adolescents who did not refuse to attend school were. Among the adolescents who had seriously attempted to commit suicide at one point in their life , there were significantly more school dropouts than among the adolescents who did not commit suicide.

Legal consequences

School attendance has been compulsory in Germany since August 1919 , so there is a requirement to attend school regularly . In the administration, truancy is referred to as "unauthorized absence from class". The unexcused absence of lessons represents a violation of the school laws (SchulG), which are subject to state law. According to § 41 SchulG NRW , the parents are responsible for ensuring that the students regularly take part in lessons and other mandatory school events. If a pupil is prevented from attending school due to illness or other unforeseeable reasons, the parents notify the school immediately and inform the school in writing of the reason for the absence from school (Section 43 (2) SchulG NRW). If pupils miss classes or other mandatory school events without excuse, administrative offense proceedings ( fine proceedings ) can be initiated against legal guardians , pupils who are required to attend vocational school , trainers and pupils who have reached the age of 14 (Section 126 (1) No. 1, 4 and 5 SchulG NRW). In the worst case, there is a risk of an officially ordered school demonstration by the police ( Section 53 (2 ) OWiG ). Parents can be punished for violating their duty of care or upbringing ( Section 171 of the Criminal Code ). The Hamm Higher Regional Court ruled in 2012: A mother who allows her child not to attend classes for two years and allows the state executive not to find out where her child is, which means that the child is found through their behavior prevents, endangers the well-being of your child according to § 1666 BGB . In the case negotiated in Hamm, this led to parental custody being withdrawn in accordance with Section 1666 of the German Civil Code. Such a measure can also be imposed on fathers and other custodians.

Sanctions

Refusal to attend school is threatened with a fine or imprisonment of up to six months for the custodian. A withdrawal of custody, on the other hand, is disproportionate if a study of the level of learning does not reveal anything worrying, social skills are not restricted, the parents look after their children and they are very attached to their parents. If the student is at fault, they face fines or working hours.

At some airports, checks are carried out just before the start of the school holidays in the country concerned, the purpose of which is to find out whether there are school-age passengers residing in the country concerned. The parents of school-age children can be fined for every day of school that their children miss, so that an early start of vacation may not be economically viable for them.

In the North Rhine-Westphalian administrative district of Cologne , “holiday extenders” can expect a fine of 120 to 1000 €.

Austria

Legal

Since the 2018/19 school year, new, more consistent rules for unexcused absenteeism have applied. According to the new Section 25 Compulsory Schooling Act, legal guardians must expect a report if their school-age children are absent for more than three school days. The calculation period for this is now the entire compulsory schooling from the first to the ninth grade and no longer just one school year or the school semester. In this context, an absence is considered to be unjustified if neither the pupil nor the parents act in any way and contact the school.

In addition, the school principals may take immediate action if there is a minor breach of compulsory school attendance of up to three days.

If there is a violation of compulsory education for more than three days, this is considered an administrative offense, which leads to proceedings at the district administrative authority. This can result in an administrative fine of at least 110 to a maximum of 440 euros.

With this regulation, the "five-step plan", which has been in force since 2013, was reformed, which, as a time-consuming and lengthy procedure, often failed due to the unwillingness of the pupils concerned or their parents to talk to them. According to the old legal situation, appropriate measures were only taken after five unexcused days of absence, 30 hours of lessons missed or three consecutive days within a school year.

For older students (up to 18 years) Since July 2017, the true duty of training , in this context, the rules are different.

Sociological

In the first year of the new regulation (2018/19) there were 3,288 penalties across Austria. By far the greatest number of fines were imposed in Vienna (1,650 cases). This is followed by Upper Austria (481), Salzburg (325), Lower Austria (262), Tyrol (216), Carinthia (179) and Styria (146). Both the Ministry of Education and the teachers' union report the working deterrent effect of tightening, which would have resulted in fewer truancy rates.

After Vienna, Vorarlberg had the highest dropout rate in all of Austria. This emerges from the drop-out report of the State Office for Statistics for 2013.

Switzerland

In Switzerland a study from 2009, one in ten children will not according to school because it is afraid of work pressure and bullying - tendency rising.

United States

In the US state of California , a 2013 report by the Attorney General's Office named a proportion of over 25% truants in elementary and high school. However, a very strict definition was applied, which applies to three full days or three times being late for more than 30 minutes. In 2013, this corresponded to a total of 1.8 million children and young people, including around 700,000 kindergarten and primary school students. 20,000 of the students in this age group even missed more than 20% of the school year. Half of all students in California are living in poverty, and almost a quarter have to learn English as a foreign language. A package of social measures was promised.

literature

  • Wolfgang Oelsner , Gerd Lehmkuhl : Fear of school. A guide for parents and teachers . Verlag Walter, Düsseldorf / Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-530-40120-X .
  • Heinrich Ricking in School Absenteeism as an Educational Challenge , Oldenburg 2011.
  • Titus Simon, Steffen Uhlig (Ed.): School refusal. Patterns, hypotheses, fields of action . Leske and Budrich, Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3584-X .
  • Karlheinz Thimm : Refusal to attend school . Beltz-Votum Verlag, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-933158-45-1 (also: Berlin, Techn. Univ., Diss.).
  • Karlheinz Thimm: School distancing . In: Angelika Henschel et al. (Ed.): Youth welfare and school. Manual for a successful cooperation . Wiesbaden 2007.

Web links

Wiktionary: truant  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "A not inconsiderable number of failures happen ... with the consent, support or tolerance of the legal guardian." Heinrich Ricking, Schulabsentismus als pedagogical challenge , 2011, p. 3.
  2. ↑ Bodo Hartke / Robert Vrban, Schwierige Schüler , Volume 1, 2009, p. 92
  3. ↑ Claus Hecking, Charlotte Schönberger: Interview with Greta Thunberg: "It is a good sign that you hate me". Spiegel Online , February 2, 2019, accessed February 5, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Maria Hendrischke: Students strike for climate protection: "It's our fucking future" . In: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , January 18, 2019. 
  5. ^ Fridays For Future Germany. Retrieved February 10, 2019 .
  6. ^ Felix Ekardt: Fridays for Future: Constitutional barriers to sanctions in the event of school absence. (pdf) Brief report on behalf of the Solarenergie-Förderverein Deutschland eV In: Prof. Dr. Dr. Felix Ekardt, LL.M., MA Research Center Sustainability and Climate Policy, Leipzig / Berlin. March 31, 2019, accessed April 5, 2019 .
  7. ^ BGH judgment of November 16, 2007
  8. ↑ sueddeutsche.de
  9. ↑ a b Carolin Donath et al .: Predictors of binge drinking in adolescents: ultimate and distal factors - a representative study . In: BMC Public Health 2012, 12: 263.
  10. ↑ a b Carolin Donath ua: Is parenting style a predictor of suicide attempts in a representative sample of adolescents? In: BMC Pediatrics , 2014, 14: 113.
  11. ↑ OLG Hamm, decision of December 21, 2012, Az .: II-2 UF 181/11
  12. ↑ Beck Online on August 29, 2014: Higher Regional Court Frankfurt am Main: School refusers have back custody of four children
  13. ^ Schulamt in Bonn: Vacation extensions can be expensive . general-anzeiger-bonn.de . 4th September 2013
  14. ↑ Violation of compulsory school attendance. In: Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research. Retrieved November 4, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Almost 3,300 fines for truants in the first year. In: Wiener Zeitung. October 29, 2019, accessed November 4, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Refusal to attend school: fines are the last step . ORF Vorarlberg from April 24, 2014.
  17. ↑ Where Parents Expect Answers from September 2, 2016, When School Presses
  18. ↑ George Szpiro: California doesn't have any fun with skipping - the unauthorized absence from school causes major problems - the head of the judiciary demands countermeasures [sic] . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . No. 302 . Zurich December 30, 2013, p. 5 .