Social Support for Adolescents With a High Level of Truancy in Swedish Compulsory Schooling

School Attendance and Academic Achievement: Understanding Variation across Family Socioeconomic Status

“…This may be more difficult for low-SES parents than high-SES parents because they must deal with multiple challenges, including socioeconomic pressures, likely prejudice from schools, and less time for involvement in their children's education due to nonstandard work schedules. Truancy may also be particularly damaging for students growing up in social housing because the consequences of truant behavior may depend on relational support and structural resources to mitigate problem behavior and feelings of disengagement (Strand, Anba ¨cken, and Granlund 2015;Teasley 2004).…”

Stability of social support during school transitions: Associations with truancy and not completing upper secondary education in normative time

“…Some empirical evidence has been accumulated regarding the impact that the level and change in student-perceived support from significant others may have on truancy. Findings by Strand et al (2015), using Swedish qualitative data, indicated that, without social support from school staff and classmates, students with a high level of truancy were not motivated to attend school. The authors concluded that student-perceived support from engaged adults at school seems particularly important for setting up a positive turning point.…”

“…Truants have been shown to have a 34.7% higher likelihood of dropping out of secondary education than regular school attendees (Cabus & De Witte, 2015), and having absent peers increases the probability of a student dropping out (De Witte & Csillag, 2014). Social support, which is conceptualized as social capital present in the relations between students and adults (Guryan et al, 2021;Strand et al, 2015) and between students (Havik et al, 2015), has been shown to serve as a protective factor shielding students from adverse schooling outcomes, such as school dropout (Ripamonti, 2018) while lack of social support is a risk factor for school absenteeism and dropout (for a review, see Gubbels et al, 2019).…”

Perspectives of students with mental health problems on improving the school environment and practice

“…Most participating students also reported recurring absence from school, which complicates social interactions. In a related study on school absence, Strand, Anbäcken, and Granlund (2015) concluded that students with recurring school absence need extra social support from family, teachers and peers. They described students successfully breaking histories of school absenteeism, in all cases through finding (more or less by chance) an adult who cared for them, rather than structural measures at school.…”