Impacts of school type and students’ class on school truancy among female teenagers in Aba, Abia State, Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the impacts of school type and students’ class on school truancy among female teenagers in Aba, Abia State of Nigeria. Using multistage sampling technique, a total of 582 female students whose ages ranged from 13 to 19 years with a mean of 14.78 and standard deviation of 1.46 were sampled for the study. Data was collected with School Truancy Questionnaire (STQ), A Cross-Sectional Survey Design was employed for the study. Three hypotheses were postulated and tested. Both Descriptive statistic and Two-Way Analysis of Variance were used in data analysis on the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0. Results revealed that school truanting behaviour of private school females and junior female students were lower than those of public school and senior female teenagers in Aba respectively. There was no interaction effect of school type and class on school truancy among female teenagers in Aba. Based on the findings, recommendation was made among others that the government of Abia state should do well to develop School Truancy Policy. The policy should address the punishment to be given to any identified truants in the society and a reward to be provided to any student with 100% attendance each term or academic session.