School Factors Analysis Of Students Absence In Primary School

Education is the acquisition,changing,and developing knowledge,skills,values,beliefs,and habits for the changing world.Schooling is the basic foundation for children to get basic skills or education while student absenteeism confuses the education system.So,being absent from school makes a big challenge for any country to develop.In Lesotho rate of absenteeism is increasing at the primary school level where education is free and compulsory.However,this qualitative study was ought to find out the reality of absenteeism among primary school students and what factors contributed to student’s absenteeism.Three research questions in this study were raised,Question 1.What is the reality of student absenteeism in selected primary schools of Maseru District Lesotho?Q2.What are school factors contributing to student absenteeism in primary schools? Q3 what strategies to be adopted to improve primary school ‘students’ attendance? And the purpose was to explore the phenomenon of student absenteeism in selected primary schools of Maseru District,Lesotho.Specifically,the study sought to understand the school factors influencing student absenteeism.Moreover,the study has maintained the following objectives to characterize the reality of student absenteeism and to examine school factors that influence student absenteeism among primary school students.This study will benefit all stakeholders,to make decisions that will be useful to improve student attendance.The study covered four selected primary schools in Maseru District Lesotho.The contributors were sixty-eight(68)from four schools.The literature was focusing on three aspects nature of absenteeism,school factors,and solution strategies.The semi-structured interview guide was used as an instrument to collect data,Data collected was transcribed,presented in thematic coding,and analyzed the findings where many factors were raised by many participants showing that teacher behavior,lack of teachers encouragement,the penalty from teachers,teachers teaching style,the difficulty of the new course,culture and lack o activities at school,peer influence,overpopulation,and shortage of front facilities that made students to became absent and they need reinforcement however such reinforcement to be successful there should be strategies in other to address.ended with a discussion,conclusion where the study revealed the truth on students absenteeism that students were not attending school regularly especially girls in upper grade,study further revealed nine factors that were contributed to their absence at school then recommendations where there was no enough time to conduct the study and consider all the aspects and limited with lack of face to face interaction due to covid19.