How Attendance Affects Performance

Remember those mornings as a kid when you would wake up feeling completely fine, yet you would swear on your life you threw-up fifteen times last night just to avoid going to school? I do.

Who knows, maybe the occasional absence is good for the brain, maybe a little freedom is just what the kids need to refresh themselves. However, missing too much school can be detrimental for students.

In a study done by Sheniz Moonie PhD, David A. Sterling PhD, Larry W, FIggs PhD, and Mario Castro MD, they noted “Excessive absenteeism is related to lower student grades, psychological, social, and educational adjustment.”

Lower Student Grades

This seems to be the obvious answer to every school place problem, “If X doesn’t happen then you will have lower grades.” Consequently I will lightly touch this by saying, not being in class for instruction and times spent on subjects will result in less understanding on tests and homework.

Psychological

Let’s go back to the childhood memory we had before. Those days when we pretended to be sick, didn’t you always kind of regret your decision? 1. Your mom makes you stay home and restricts you from all fun activities because “you’re sick.” 2. You don’t know what is happening at school and you start to worry about getting behind. The stress that can start to weigh down on a student after being absent for too many days can be severe. I remember suffering from a few explosions when I had too much homework piled up after a long-vacation.

Social

Not only did you stack up on homework in your absences, but you missed out on all the fun of the class. You return to a foreign classroom full of inside jokes that you can only grin and pretend you are in on. Heck, after one long break I came back to find my 6th grade crush had fallen in love with my best friend. The social aspect of school is one of the main driving factors for students enjoyment, throwing this out of balance can really set a student back.

Educational Adjustment

This is the extreme of the group, should students miss too much class then perhaps some adjustments like additional resource classes, tutors, detention and even staying another year in the same grade.

Fortunately many schools today have attendance policies in place to keep track of students and to make sure that everyone is getting the attendance they need to keep up. Today management Softwares have been created to keep track of students and notify faculty of issues by immaculate reporting tools. Parents keep your kids in school and schools keep track of your students to make sure none are slipping away.

For more information on attendance softwares look at KeepnTrack.