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The purpose of this paper is to examine data on absences and exclusions from school amongst children with learning disabilities and autistic children in England in 2016/2017.

Data were drawn from Department for Education statistics for the school year 2016/2017 on school absences (authorised and unauthorised) and school exclusions (fixed-period and permanent) for children in the primary special educational needs categories of moderate learning difficulty (MLD), severe learning difficulty (SLD), profound and multiple learning difficulty (PMLD) and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD).

Authorised school absence rates were higher for all groups of children investigated compared to children without special educational needs, primarily due to illnesses and health-related appointments. Rates of unauthorised school absences were low. Rates of fixed-period and permanent school exclusions were higher for children with MLD and ASD compared to children without SEN, and lower for children with SLD and PMLD. Reasons given for exclusions were similar across children (persistent disruptive behaviour, physical assault against a pupil, verbal abuse against an adult), although physical assault against an adult was also commonly mentioned for children with SLD, PMLD or ASD.

Reducing school absences for children with learning disabilities and autistic children will involve co-ordination of health and social care support arrangements to ensure they are convenient and efficient for children and families. In terms of exclusions, schools need to consider the extent to which they are making reasonable adjustments for children with learning disabilities and autistic children.

This paper presents in one place statistics concerning school absences and school exclusions for children with learning disabilities and autistic children in England.

This paper aims to offer a theoretical framework for linking school ethical climate with teachers' voluntary absence. The paper attempts to explain this relationship using the concept of affective organizational commitment.

Participants were 1,016 school teachers from 35 high schools in Israel. Data were collected by self‐report questionnaires and tested against archival data. The GENMOD procedure of SAS was applied. This procedure enables regression models for variables which are not necessarily normally distributed – such as absence – to be fit and also to account for the intraclass‐correlations within schools. Absence was measured by frequency of absence events, and ethical climate was measured by two dimensions: caring and formal.

Results show that caring and formal ethical climates are both related to teacher absence. Affective commitment was found to mediate the relationship between formal ethical climate and absence frequency. This is not true for the ethical climate of caring.

School principals may reduce voluntary absence by creating an ethical climate focused on caring and clear and just rules and procedures.

Whereas past research on work absence focused primarily on personal antecedents, the present study addresses factors embedded in school ethics. The results contribute to knowledge of the influence of organizational context on absence behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differential relations between two teacher withdrawal behaviors: work absence and lateness, and two types of school ethics: organizational justice (distributive, procedural) and ethical climate (formal, caring), all in the context of school turbulent environment.

Data were collected from 1,016 teachers in 35 Israeli high schools. The GLIMMIX procedure was used to consider simultaneously the hierarchical structure of the data, as well as the two dependent variables (absence and lateness).

The results showed that lateness was negatively related to two relatively short-term aspects of school ethics: distributive justice, in particular for women, and formal ethical climate. Absence was negatively related to a relatively long-term aspect of school ethics: caring climate, in particular for low- to medium-level seniority teachers.

The paper’s theoretical contribution is to explicate the unique relation of each temporal withdrawal behavior to specific dimensions of the school ethical constructs studied.

In order to reduce teachers’ temporal withdrawal behaviors, school management may need to attenuate policy that taps into organizational ethics, while considering the effects of school culture and turbulent environment.

This study offers a time perspective, which fine-tunes understanding of teachers’ lateness and absence behaviors, while pointing out the unique relations of lateness and absence to school ethical within educational policy context.

Deming’s quality managment principles (TQM) are widely used as a school restructuring vehicle and produce increases in student achievement and self‐esteem and increased teacher morale and self‐confidence. Application of Deming’s principles and the TQM problem‐solving tools and techniques can be used to solve noninstructional problems of schooling. These areas, which create unnecessary costs to the school and community, include vandalism, school dropouts and student absenteeism. This case study presents a model for principals to apply to provide quality outcomes, at reduced cost, in noninstructional areas. Using teachers, parents, community members, and applying the problem‐solving tools and techniques of TQM to identify root problem causes, principals can identify realistic solutions which yield positive results and reduce costs in academic and nonacademic areas.

The study aims to provide insight on the potential effectiveness of demand-side financing for catalyzing improved educational outcomes in Malawi; and, given the extent of cost-related constraints to school contexts in other low-income countries, the results have relevance for education policy decisions more broadly.

This study utilizes a non-equivalent groups research design to compare the educational experiences and outcomes of two student groups – those who did and those who did not receive a needs-based scholarship to attend secondary school and college in the Dowa, Kasungu, and Lilongwe Districts of Malawi. The authors assess impacts across a range of short and medium-term outcomes, including: school attendance, withdrawal, attainment, graduation, employment status, employment quality, and post-schooling income.

The scholarship substantially reduces the household cost of participation in school, and reduces the distance travelled to school. As a result, scholarship recipients attain between 1 and 1.5 years of additional schooling and graduate at higher rates. In terms of post-schooling outcomes, recipients are in higher wage-earning occupations after leaving school. Overall, results suggest that scholarships are an effective demand-side strategy for improving educational attainment, progression, and potentially longer-term labor market outcomes.

The study adds new evidence on policy approaches for expanding access to educational opportunities and increasing labor market outcomes in a context (Malawi specifically and sub-Saharan Africa more broadly) where evidence on such demand-side interventions is still growing.

The purpose of this study is to examine the prevalence and association among school refusal behavior, self-esteem, parental school involvement and aggression in punctual and truant school-going adolescents.

A purposive sampling technique and cross-sectional design were used in the current study. Participants comprised three heterogeneous sub-groups: school truant students, park truant students and punctual students.

This study’s findings indicated that father and mother’s school involvement was related to more elevated level of self-esteem for school truant students. Results also indicated that male truant students had more significant probability to school refusal behavior and physical aggression as compared to female truant students. Moreover, results revealed that physical aggression fully mediated among mother’s school involvement, academic self and school refusal behavior in punctual students and school truant students.

There is more need to develop indigenous school-based preventions and interventions aimed at decreasing school truancy in Pakistani context by tackling the predisposing vulnerable factors and supporting and encouraging the protective family and internal factors.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the “Back on Track” program is designed to support students with a chronic illness (usually cancer) to maintain contact with their school and peers whilst undergoing treatment, to promote socio‐emotional wellbeing and to facilitate the ease of return to school when they are well. An evaluation of the program occurred in its first year.

A clarificative evaluation approach was used. This involved collecting data about the elements of the program design and implementation to understand and make explicit the logic of the program. It comprised three stages: documenting the program design; gathering stakeholder feedback about the experiences in the program; and reviewing the program logic of the design and implementation approaches.

The program (“Back on Track”) actively engaged teachers, parents, students and Program staff in negotiating strategies to keep the students (patients) connected with their school and peers whilst undergoing hospital‐based treatment for their chronic condition, in this case cancer, and when recovering at home before a full return to school. Difficulties emerged with the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) as one of the key program components in keeping the students connected. There were also differences in views between the Program staff, schoolteachers and some of the students and their parents about the ongoing role of the Program once students had returned to school.

The paper indicates what is needed to enhance the implementation and success of programs such as “Back on Track” for this group of young people who have significant chronic illnesses, which necessitate prolonged absences from school and separation from peers.

Chronic health conditions can cause children extended school absences, creating significant barriers for continued education. Out‐of‐school learning environments, such as hospitals, provide opportunities to maintain children's learning identities during school absences. This paper seeks to present an example of hospital‐based teaching and learning and to explore the challenges of providing child‐centred learning opportunities in this environment.

A case study narrative describes the underpinnings of child‐centred teaching and learning within a children's hospital. The “Around the World” learning activity is used to discuss the challenges and strategies when fostering learning environments for children with diverse needs.

The paper highlights how pedagogy is apparent in a children's health setting. Reflective teacher practice translated pedagogical principles into dynamic, situated learning activities that engaged children visiting a hospital Out‐patients area. The display of learning artefacts within Out‐patients helped raise awareness of the learning identities of children within the hospital.

This case study is one example of the learning opportunities that can be fostered within a hospital. The findings have implications for educators in both traditional and alternative learning environments regarding how spaces can be used to “seize the moment” with children in their care. The learning needs of adolescents spending time in hospital also need to be met in developmentally appropriate ways.

This paper illustrates how a hospital, as a traditionally held “health” space, can be reconceptualised as a learning space to accommodate the multiple identities of children and build a shared understanding between education and health professionals of the value of integrating learning into a holistic and child‐centred model of care.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the proximity of study centres to the students of College of Distance Education, University of Cape Coast (CoDE/UCC) and whether further studies of distance learners who were teachers and employees could lead to absenteeism in their workplaces.

A sequential explanatory strategy was used. A self-administered questionnaire and unstructured interviews as well as observation guides were employed to collect data from 2,077 students pursuing business and education programmes of CoDE in all study centres across Ghana. Data were analysed with descriptive statistics and pattern matching of content analysis.

The study found that few teachers and other workers pursuing the distance education do absent themselves from the workplace or classroom on Fridays preceding their face-to-face session because they embarked on their journey to the study centres on Friday morning. Some teachers also absented themselves from work on Mondays after face-to-face sessions for a lack of means of transport on Sunday after lessons. The absenteeism of these respondents directly and indirectly affected their employers, students and customers.

It was therefore recommended that management of CoDE/UCC should open more study centres in all the regions especially Western, Ashanti, Upper East, Northern and Upper West Regions to reduce number of hours spent by students to their study centres and consider introducing the business programmes at the existing district centres to reduce average distance covered by these students to commute from their places of work to their respective centres in the regional capitals. It was also recommended that online/electronic learning and audio versions (impersonal communication) of the study modules should be introduced so that students would not necessary have to travel to the study centre to participate in lectures/face-to-face sessions.

The findings of this study will help managers and administrators of both public and private distance educational providers. In addition to providing basis and areas for establishing study centres for geographical proximity, findings of the study should prove helpful for designing and delivering electronic and audio versions of distance education modules to reduce the level of absenteeism in workplace for the students.

The aim of this essay is to contribute to the international discussion on the consequences of the pandemic in education. This essay focuses on the case of school education (ISCED 1–3) in the Czech Republic, where a complete, long-term, nationwide school closure was implemented. Schools faced an unprecedented situation and rapidly changing teaching practices. First, the Czech context is briefly introduced with a description of the year-long anti-pandemic measures. A critical reflection of school experiences during the pandemic follows, mainly focused on the roles and activities of main actors, teachers, parents, and students in distance education. Changes in the forms, methods, and contents of teaching and learning are reflected, as is the role of governmental policy toward schools. Further economic consequences and impacts of the anti-pandemic measures on the health of the Czech school population are pointed out. Following a review of the main shifts in schooling, the concluding considerations discuss challenges for the future and possible inspiration from on-line education for the further development of school education. The essay is based on data from monitoring and thematic reports, national surveys, public discussions, and continuous observations made by the author during the course of the pandemic.