Review of literature related to this study is presented under the following sub-headings
Conceptual framework
Theoretical framework
Review of empirical studies
Summary of literature review
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Truancy have been conceptualized by different authors and in different ways. In 1987, Reid wrote “truancy is disobedience. Children are sent to school. It is the law, that they go there.
If they choose not to go, they are disobeying adult authority, either of their parents or of the state”. He further stated that truancy can lead to other, more tangible forms of delinquency. Despite some evidence to the contrary, there is a common association of truancy with crimes such as theft, criminal damage, robbery with violence, and abusive conduct.
According to Hornby (1998) “truancy is the practice of staying away from school without permission” this means that truancy occurs when a student absents himself from school without due permission, either from parents or relevant school authorities.
In 1999, Adeyemo defined truancy as a delinquent act, which occurs when a child often stays away from school without good reason. Finally, a popular meaning was in 2002 given by carter who considers truancy as a deliberate absence from school, on the part of the pupil, for which no reasonable or acceptable excuse is given.
These definitions indicate certain elements of truancy that must be stressed upon, so as to understand the real concept of truancy. Those areas of stress are the different forms of truancy. For instance there are:-
v Habitual truancy
v Occasional truancy
v Causal truancy
Habitual Truancy
This is the type of truancy that occurs when a student or pupil absents himself or herself constantly from school without due knowledge or consent of his parents and school authorities. These group of students normally miss full day’s of school academic activities. Thus, making them fall behind other students in their academic records.
Occasional Truancy
Here, the students do not constantly and continually absent themselves from school. An instance of this type is a child, whose mother denies from going to school for one reason or the other (Ezeani, 2006).
Causal Truancy
This occurs when a student absents himself from school by chance. It is not regular; an instance is when students remain in-doors at the sound of school bell so that they could attend only those lessons which interest them.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Granted that school is good, the reciprocal is never far behind, that lack of schooling is bad. Thus the popular emphasis on what bad things children will do out of school.
It may even be that truancy, once established in a family becomes hereditary. Robins et al (1979) reported that persistent truants tend to marry each other, as a result tolerate truancy in their own children.
The meliorists might be wrong in that the relationship between truancy and the various forms of delinquency may be one of common effect rather than of cause and effect (Farington 1986). Perhaps there are some people disposed as children to break windows and as adults to go on the dole, who are also disposed to stay away from school. But this hypothesis, if correct, tends not to deny the usefulness of seeking an answer to the question of why student play truants, but instead to give new grounds for seeking one.
Great importance also is the consideration of the cost effect of truancy. The ministry of education is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of primary and secondary schools throughout Ebonyi State. It supplies the finance for teachers’ salaries and provides other educational finance. Its current spending is based on the assumption that there will be about two hundred thousand children in the schools to be taught. Once committed, this money must be spent regardless of how many children are actually attending the schools, the larger the number of children absenting themselves from these schools, therefore, the greater the waste of public resources.
These are some of the reasons why truancy is a subject thought worth investigating, and has been so thought-of, in differing degree especially in this very century.
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