In 1993, another UK survey found that, overall, boys truanted twice as often as girls. One third of 16-year olds had missed lessons at least once in the previous half term, one in five because they want to miss a particular lesson. One in 10 of all pupils were truanting at least once a week. Much of this is what is termed "post-registration truancy" and may not involve students actually leaving the school premises -- levels of "off-school" truants of schools in poor areas was almost 3 times that for truants in affluent area schools. (Otherwise, there was not a large difference in truancy levels overall between schools in poor and affluent areas.) Two-thirds of truants questions found school "generally enjoyable" or were neutral in their attitude. Reasons given by lesson truants for avoiding classes were (a) irrelevant lessons (34% of those surveyed); (b) dislike of teacher (29%); (c) dislike of subject (22%); (d) coursework problems (19%); (e) difficulty with subject (14%); (f) poor teaching (3%) and (g) bullying (1%). Peer pressure, home problems or depression all came low (less than 1%). There was almost no evidence that truanting is involved with crime.
In the Neapolitan area of Italy in 1992, it was estimated that up to 30% of pupils enrolled in high schools may be staying away from school regularly. Many are believed to be exploited by underworld clans as drug runners. In 1994 in Philadelphia, with the nation's fourth highest truancy rate, 27,000 of the 191,000 school pupils were reported as truants on any one day.
2. If children thought that they needed what school gave, they would be sure to avail themselves of it. But not all the stale exhortations will convince them that unemployment is more bearable with qualifications than without.