INFLUENCE OF TRUANCY ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE OF PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS IN AWKA SOUTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF ANAMBRA STATE

1.1 Background of the Study
Education is purported to be a commodity to society, a core of human progress. Education is a critical factor in the development of any country. It influences the life of humanity the world over in all spheres of development such as political, social, cultural, religious and economic development (Musa, 2014). The school has been established as the agent of the society to mould the habits, interest, attitudes and feelings of children and transmit the societal norms, culture, values and traditions from one generation to another. Mahuta, (2007) opined that a school is regarded as a Centre of knowledge and it possesses the power to mould and shape the character of individuals in the society. The school as an institution is a place of learning morality and inculcates discipline in the children. Despite this, some children engage in truant behavior such as staying off school without permission and skipping classes. Truancy is about learners who have not been attending school regularly as required by the school, parents and even the authorities. Truancy is the problem or situation of children being absent from school regularly without permission.

The rate at which children absent themselves from school is staggering. Tata, Shehu and Aliyu (2015), Okwakpam and Okwakpam (2012) identified truancy as an act of indiscipline commonly found in Nigerian schools. Truancy can come in the form of absenteeism from school, non-attendance to classes. According to Malungo (2010), when children are not in attendance they miss essential instruction which often times cannot be replicated. Non-attendance is among key problems faced by the schools. The consequences of non-school attendance behaviour extend beyond the four walls of the academic environment. Children’s absence from school for unexcused reasons is referred to as truancy (Musa, 2014).

In Nigeria, truancy is escalating at a high rate. Musa (2014) found that schools in Nigeria are faced with the problems of child truancy as a result of financial related factors.
Truancy was influenced by different factors from which each has its own complexity. The study discussed factors that contribute to truancy, stemming from four core areas which include socio-economic status of parents, location of school, professional development of teachers, peer group influence that encourage truancy. However, other factors have been blamed as contributing to truancy among children in primary schools as this study sees truancy as the deliberate act of a child skipping schools for no justifiable reasons.

In recent times, education has been recognized globally as one of the universal ways of survival and improvement of the well-being of individuals and society. The advent of formal education is considered as the foundation for national development as well as the surest way of making all long life achievements. For these reasons, families and citizens especially the youth and children now pay more attention to education. Consequently no nation, government, organization or family makes effective impact and lasting successes in their daily affairs without having educated citizens, officers, workers who had clearer understanding of their obligations, functions or responsibilities, observe the laws, apply policies and co-operate in its affairs. The 6-3-3-4 System of Education established in 1982 was aimed at providing Universal Basic Education for the citizens in order to breed species of individuals with compassion for our great Nation, having National consciousness with the right attitude to life, properties and values required to move national development to the next level. (Ogbonna, Chinasa, and Onwuchekwa, 2009).

However, the effort invested by the federal government of Nigeria on education had over the years proven a fruitful and promising reward to national development posing a lively hope for the better in the immediate future. It is of no doubt that several factors have posed relentless restriction to the trend of the rapid development in education for which truancy in both pupils and teachers in primary and secondary schools has been a cankerworm to education. This has raised several questions to the quality of education and educational administration in Nigerian Primary Schools. Truancy is any intentional unauthorized or illegal absence from compulsory schooling (Chukwuka,2013). Truancy is one of the major antisocial discipline problems among primary school pupils in Nigeria. The concept and acts of indiscipline have received a lot of attention by researchers. Peck (2003) opined that the various behavioural disorders like stealing, violence, drug abuse, examination malpractice, sexual abuse and truancy have so undermined effective teaching-learning processes that some teachers have become helpless and disorganized in their task of impacting knowledge to the learners.

Furthermore, the impact of truancy is very obvious and usually a negative one on truants’ present and future life in education. Truancy results in loss of intellectual development and lack of improvement of individual. Also, it leads to poor academic performance at the end of the school periods, school terms and school year. Truancy as a threat to academic performances of the pupils is believed to reduce the quality of education the child receives. It reduces the standard of academic achievement of a child. It leads to the fall in educational standard in schools. It increases the rate of examination malpractices and poor examination results of both internal and external examinations. Truancy is also a factor that contributes to idealness, joblessness and underemployment of most adults today, just because they engaged in the act of truancy during their school days. Nevertheless, the aim of this work is to investigate the actual acts, causes, and factors of truancy in primary schools visà-vis its influence on the academic performances of these truants.