EXPOSITION ANNECIA COMPASS

Exposition:10 minutes 16 marks

Good morning Miss Reid and my fellow classmates. My name is Annecia Compass and I am a student of
Knox College. How many of you have ever felt like not coming to school for a day, even a week? I
suppose most of us would think about doing so but how many of us actually do it without our parent's
consent? The theme I will be focusing on is Truancy among students at the Secondary level. This topic
interests me as an individual because as a teenager myself, I have felt the pressures of school and felt like
giving up but I have not adhered to that as other students my age do. The purpose of this discourse is to
enlighten you on why, some students like you and I adhere to the scrupulous act of truancy.
What exactly is truancy and who are truants? According to the oxford dictionary, truancy is defined as the
action of staying away from school without good reason and it states that a truant is a pupil who stays
away from school without leave or explanation.
This speech serves to succinctly explore the possible causes of truancy .
causes of truancy
I will now be examining the possible causes of truancy. According to Zhang, Barrett and Wilson (2007),
the causes of truancy can be positioned within four major categories. These categories include family
factors, school factors, economic influences, and student variables.
The search for parental factors that might inhibit student attendance led to researched reasons for poor student attendance in a primary
school in Nigeria. The study identified several factors that inhibited parents from sending their children to school. The most prevalent factors
were poverty and the high cost of schooling. Additional reasons identified in the study were the value of money, misconceptions about the
importance of educating females, and the rise in unemployment. The study concluded that poor parents did not send their children to school
and females were more likely to be absent from school. Parents did not send their children to school because the parents did not want to pay
the cost of schooling. Furthermore, children were discouraged from going to school because of the parents beliefs that jobs would not be
available even if the children went to school.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, over one-quarter (15 million) of school-aged children (aged 517 years) in the United
States did not have perfect attendance during the previous surveyed year due to illness or injury. During the survey year, five percent of
children missed 11 or more days of school due to illness or injury. Children from families with low incomes were more than twice as likely to
have absences of 11 days or more (9%) compared to children from families with the highest income (4%). Children from single-parent
families were more than twice as likely to have been absent from school for 11 or more days during the past survey year due to illness or
injury as compared to children from two-parent families.

According to London AP (2002) more than 50,000 students skip school everyday in Britain.
EXPOSITION ANNECIA COMPASS

Let's now take a closer look at how family factors influence truancy.
In a study on eighth and tenth grade students, Henry(2007) correlates family factors with truant
behaviours. Henry's study illustrates that the lower the father's education the more likely the child is to
commit truancy and there is a greater chance the child will commit truancy if the mother was a high
school dropout. Additionally, Henry's research proves that the longer a child is unsupervised after school,
the more likely that child is to become a truant. In Henry's research it was found that 29.9% of truants
were unsupervised for five hours or more after school where as only 11.3% of truants were never
unsupervised after school. In a recent study on truant offenders in the juvenile justice system, Zhang et al.
(2007) linked truancy to household income. They established that minors that are first referred to the
juvenile justice system tend to be more financially impoverished.
Let's now examine how school factors influence truancy.
How many of us feel safe in our school daily? Henry (2007) solicits that 23 % of truants choose to skip
school because they do not feel safe in their school environment. Moreover, if a student does not feel
comfortable, secure or safe and logically decides to skip school because location x is safer than the
school, he is punished. However, Tobin (2009) suggests that imposing more serious punishments has
worsened truant behaviour; thus proving to be counterproductive in the fight against chronic absenteeism.
How many of us have ever felt alienated in our school setting? According to Wilkins (2008), students that
attend large schools may feel isolated or alienated in their school setting, so to escape these feelings they
choose not to attend. These children do not feel wanted, valued or accepted and their diverse needs
whether instructional, social or various others cannot consistently be met and student-teacher
relationships cannot be developed. This leads to a school climate and attitude in which each individual
must fend for himself.

Student variables that may cause truant behaviour include, but are not limited to physical and mental
health problems, substance abuse, drug use , perception of self and detachment from school. Desocio et
al.(2007) identifies physical and mental health issues as contributing towards school absenteeism.
Supporting evidence from Henry's study(2007) implicates students that use alcohol one or more times a
month is 26.5% more likely to skip school than peers who do not use alcohol, and if the student drinks to
EXPOSITION ANNECIA COMPASS

a level of intoxication his likelihood of skipping school increases to 31.2%. Moreover, 33.9% of the
students who have been truant smoke cigarettes and 37.2% smoke marijuana at least once a month. Even
more defining, Desocio, et al.(2007) indicate that as many as 30% of youth who are absent on a given
school day are representative of school disengagement or detachment. According to Henry(2007),
students that exhibit school disengagement, lack commitment to the school, are poor achievers and hold
low aspirations for their futures.
Conclusion

Challenges faced
The main challenge faced when writing my exposition was finding recent information on my theme
of truancy among students at the secondary level due to lack of references. Most of the information were
from a biased and unprofessional perspective so they were not appropriate for this exposition. Another
challenge was finding a specific objective for my speech. It was hard determining whether to examine the
causes or effects of truancy. However I came to the conclusion of looking at the causes of truancy since it
brings about awareness to particular students that they are not the only ones who are faced with every day
struggles , which will furthermore motivate them to stay in school.