Combating Truancy: Can the Computer Help Schools?

ARS is an acronym for Absence Registration System, a computer-assisted system that supports the registration of absent students as well as the analysis of absence data. The design and development of the system resulted from an initiative by the Dutch government, which was looking for a means to reduce absenteeism and therefore started a project in 1988 with thirty secondary schools in large cities in western Holland. Project schools received ARS hardware and software, as well as support when implementing the system in their school. In exchange for these facilities schools had to collaborate in a research project intended to evaluate the introduction and effects of ARS. The aim of the project was to investigate whether the computer could help schools to reduce absenteeism. It was hoped that this would be possible for several reasons. Firstly, the ARS procedure for registering and handling absent students is systematic and, if carried out correctly, enables the detection of absent students. ARS produces so-called absence control lists that contain all students who have been absent without a reason regarded as valid by the school. Absence control lists are used to determine reasons for absence of one or more individual truants (valid reasons or not). When the reason for a student's absence is known, an absence handler (e.g. a tutor) can decide if measures against that student (punishment, counselling etc.) should be taken. Measures against individual truants will hopefully reduce absenteeism by discouraging them to play truant. A second reason for the expected reduction of truancy concerns the statistical reports ARS can produce, which can assist schools to discover absenteeism patterns, such as relations between absenteeism rates and other variables (e.g. subjects, teachers and timetable characteristics). On the basis of this information schools can develop an antitruancy policy; that is, apply general measures for the whole school, which are meant to reduce the extent of truancy.