The Current - Why are more kids missing school?

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Exclusive data collected by CBC shows absenteeism from school is on the rise in Canada, but why are kids missing school? Parents and researchers say it's hard to know for sure, but youth mental health and a lack of support for different learning needs at school is part of the problem.

In 1983, Paladin Press published a book called Hitman. This book offers specific tips for the aspiring contract killer. Things like where to find employment, how much to charge, basically how to get away with murder, and also not feel bad about it. Ten years later, the book was linked to a triple killing. This week on Crime Story, can a book be an accomplice to murder? Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast.

William does not want to go to school. Sometimes I get sick. Sometimes I'm really tired. But some days I just, like, really don't want to go in. Williams in grade 7. He's been having a hard time, especially when it comes to bullies. And he is not alone. An exclusive CBC News analysis found more students are staying home from school,

and experts say mental health issues among students, often exacerbated by bullying, are partly to blame. As part of our ongoing series, looking at the state of public education in this country, I'm joined by Tara Carmen. She is a senior reporter with CBC's investigative unit has been gathering this data. Tara, good morning. Good morning, Matt. So go through the numbers. What did you find when it comes to the rising rates of student absences? Well, Matt, generally speaking, they're up from five years ago.

And the kind of absence that's up everywhere I looked for every district I got data from, every age group is illness. And in some places, rates have more than tripled since before the pandemic. What do the numbers tell us about why so many kids aren't in school? They don't tell us enough. The numbers are vague. Each school board breaks absences down differently. So illness, for example, is not even tracked on its own in all districts. Sometimes it's lumped in with excused absences.

So if folks are wondering, okay, is this cold, is this mental health, is this COVID, the data just doesn't have that information. And the only way to find out is to talk to people who study it. So I actually went to a conference, which was the first ever Canadian conference on school attendance last spring. And the main thing experts there were talking about in terms of what's keeping kids away was mental health and how to make kids feel safer at school. David Smith is a psychologist and professor at the University of Ottawa who studied bullying and how it affects mental health. How this is represented by the children to their families, to their parents, how families represent that back to the school.

Do the parents excuse their child from school because they're feeling ill, that they know about the bullying, or maybe the child is reluctant to actually even disclose that information to their parents that they're being bullied? and present that to them as illness, and then that's... So it's hard to say, you know, what means what in all of this? Because, you know, it's... Yeah, there's a lot of layers, and it's complicated. It's complicated. What about those unexplained absences that you mentioned? Yeah, well, this is the thing, Matt.

Mental health, very likely a factor there as well. And a lot of what this data shows is more a reflection of how schools categorize absences or whether they even get reported at all. So if we're coming back to the example David just used with a kid being bullied, saying they're sick, if the parents are around, that might get called in as an illness. But if they aren't, it might get recorded as an unexcused absence. And there's all kinds of reasons a parent might not be around to make that call.

So tell me how you went about collecting this information. How did you gather the data? Oh, Matt, it was painful. It took months and 46 free. of information requests, some of which I did by snail mail during a postal strike. Sometimes districts didn't have data or they didn't have it in the way I was asking for it. And the legislation in some provinces allows places to charge for search time and preparation time. But I think the takeaway here is that it is very hard and can be very expensive to get meaningful data on the reasons for school absences at the national level.

We're going to speak with a child and family psychologist in a moment who works with the Canadian school attendance partnership and we'll talk about some of the other reasons that we're seeing perhaps arise in kids and teens that aren't in school. But we started this with William, who is in grade seven. Tell me a little bit about him. Yeah, well, as you mentioned off the top, William is going through a lot of stuff. He's in grade seven. He really likes math. He has a keyboard in his room, also a trumpet. But William will be the first to tell you that he's short for his age.

He's four foot six at 12. And sometimes his face twitches in ways that he can't control. And both of those things are reasons William says he gets bullied by kids in the schoolyard. And so how does that, I mean, that's really sad to hear. How does that translate into him trying to avoid school? Well, we're going to hear from his dad, Norm DiPasquale. And Norm explains how he finds a. himself dealing with a child who's trying to get out of going to school at least once a

week. You do your best. You want your child to go to school every day so they can learn, grow, and thrive. But, you know, you also have to look out for your child's well-being and mental well-being. And there are days where you look at your child and they simply, they don't have it in them to go to school that day. You said something interesting. You do your best. How are the parents trying to navigate all of this? Because, yeah, you want your child to go school, but there's things going on that may not want, they may not want to go to school to have to face those sorts of things. Yeah, exactly, Matt. It's really hard on parents when they see their kids, like, distressed like this. But Norm says, yeah, has to give his son the space

to make these decisions in order to preserve his trust. But this is something he wrestles with daily. He has to endure, it seems enough, while he's at school that I don't want to, to endure further hardship from me. So I want to always have our relationship be a positive one where he can share with me what's going on with him at school. So we can, you know, ideally reduce the absenteeism. But I need that line of communication to stay open. He has to trust me.

How common are stories like the one we just heard? More common than you might think, Matt, and not just here in Canada. At the absenteeism conference, there were parents from the UK who were talking about being prosecuted sometimes and fined for their child. children's absences, Australia, New Zealand, talking about how to support kids with mental health challenges that make it really hard to go to school. And even in my own life, whenever I brought up this topic,

it seems like everyone knows someone. And David Smith said, although it's difficult to track, his research shows bullying and the mental health distress it produces is something that keeps a lot of kids home, especially at Williams' age. William said it himself like I think he said grade seven sucks or something like that it's actually the peak time for these kinds of experiences it's the most widespread in terms of the numbers of kids who are affected by it who are involved in bullying and the

impacts of it are the worst so middle school grade seven grade eight is we know that bullying is at its worst the staying home like this is a well-known well-documented reaction of kids and parents to bullying situations. Is it just bullying or are there other things going on that would lead a kid to think, you know what, I can't go to school today. There are other things that they have to face, things that they have to navigate when they get there

that would lead them to stay home. Oh, for sure, Matt. And again, much of this is anecdotal, but any parent listening right now won't come as a surprise that lack of support for students with different learning needs isn't helping when it comes to absenteeism. Data from some boards, Calgary was one,

showed the kids with diagnosed learning challenges had higher rates of absence. And I spoke with Courtney McLean, who's a mother of three in Basano, Alberta. And until last summer, the family lived in Erdry. So Courtney spoke about how much of a challenge the large classes were for her children who all have ADHD.

They didn't have enough classrooms for her grade, so they put two classes together in an upstairs space that was pretty much surrounded by windows to the hallway, to the outside, everywhere, and there were 52 kids in her classroom. There were two teachers, so they technically met their ratios, and for a child with anxiety, especially when social anxiety is easily triggered, you had to convince her to go to school. There's an amount of fortitude that especially children with anxiety have to develop to survive, especially in such a busy, stressful sort of time that we live in. Is she hopeful that the supports that you talked about and that she has hinted aren't there will be there so that her kids can get back into the class? I think Courtney is very much in the trenches right now and may not be feeling too optimistic. about that. She says the teacher's strike in Alberta was an example of the state of education in that province and the tension over funding, especially funding to better support students like her kids who need accommodations.

Education feels like it's become a fight. We have come so far in the past 10, 20, 30 years understanding how the brain works, how education works. And there just feels like a tremendous amount of resistance to affecting change in how we structure our schools, our school systems, our classrooms. So what do we do about this? What do we do about creating the conditions so the kids will be actually in the classroom? Well, I think a lot of the time to make kids feel safer, it does come down to staffing, more staffing.

David Smith says that's definitely the case when it comes to bullying. You need to increase supervision. I don't know staffing issues in schools. I mean, we've just been through a strike in Alberta. We heard, you know, the staffing shortages were a really big deal there. I can tell you this, though, in relation to the bullying, is that we know that bullying happens in places that are not supervised by adults in schools, right? So this is the washrooms.

These are sort of remote corners of the playground, cafeteria, and one of the most accessible and straightforward solutions, at least to deal with a part of the bullying, is to get adults out there supervising all of the places where kids are gathering, being present. There's good research that has shown that when you increase adult supervision in undersupervised places in schools and schoolyards, you have a meaningful effect on bullying rates. It doesn't get rid of all of it, that's for sure. but it can make a substantial impact. And for students with different learning needs,

it's a similar answer. Staffing, and especially having that safe adult kids can go to if they're having a bad day. And staff were better equipped to help kids who learn in a bunch of different ways. Tara, thank you very much for this. Thanks for having me. Tara Carmen is a senior reporter with the CBC's investigative unit.

There are two kinds of Canadians, those who feel something when they hear this music. And those who've been missing out so far, I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Neil Kuxel. We are the co-hosts of As It Happens, and every day we speak with people at the center of the day's most hard-hitting, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious news stories. Also, we have puns. Here Why As It Happens is one of Canada's longest running in most beloved shows. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Natasha McBarrarty studies student absences both as a researcher at the University of Ottawa and with the Canadian school attendance. partnership. Natasha, good morning to you. Good morning. Why aren't kids going to school?

Well, I think to echo what Tara was saying, there are multiple reasons why kids aren't going to school, and we know that happens at different levels. So, you know, the reasons that were mentioned around mental health or learning, exceptionalities, there are also family issues, so it could be economic hardship or, you know, difficulties, you know, family. difficulty is, but it can also be at the community or systems level. So we know that things like transportation, food security, kids having to work, these are all things that contribute to absenteeism. And I think one of the issues with the data is that it doesn't tell a full picture or a picture of those reasons, which makes it difficult for us to intervene. Tell me more about the data, because

one of the things that comes out is that absences are categorized by school boards as a excused or unexcused absences. What is the difference between the two? Well, that's an excellent question. I think, you know, looking at the data globally, the data, you know, absenteeism itself isn't defined. So you look at, you know, the percentage of days missed in some regions. Others are, you know, in Ontario.

It's the percentage of days attended. It can be by class or by child. So, you know, right there, we're kind of compared. paring apples and oranges when we look at this data overall. But when we look at excuse absences, we're, you know, talking about absences in terms of legitimacy. So, you know, is a parent excusing the absent? Is the school condoning the reason why a child was absent, which doesn't tell us anything about whether or not that absence was problematic. And, you know, obviously an absence of a child who's maybe off on a family vacation with a, you know, with their

learning on the road compared to a child who maybe isn't accommodated because of their disability. These are two very different reasons, very different impact. You know, so the excuse unexcuses isn't telling us about whether or not that is problematic for the child. What else are we missing when it comes to what we understand about why kids aren't in school? Well, I think the main thing is understanding the reason. So, you know, again, unless we understand why we are throwing solutions that, you know, a problem that we haven't identified. So that is definitely one of the main things. I also spoke about whether or not that absence is problematic. Now, we're really coming at it from the perspective that any absence is problematic because it's a missed opportunity for learning, for social connection, for, you know, social-emotional development. So I think that's missing. And then a really important piece for me is that this data, of course, captures kids

who are on school registered, but we registers, but we know that there's a whole cohort of kids who, you know, whether they're between schools or, you know, haven't attended for so long that they just don't appear on the register anymore. Those kids, that's the invisible absenteeism that I think we really need to pay attention. into. And so when we're talking about measuring absenteeism, I think we need to look beyond schools and work with community partners, you know, primary care, et cetera, to come up with true numbers that reflect maybe our most vulnerable children who aren't in school. And your sense is that data is not being recorded equitably, that we don't have data on

some of those more vulnerable communities in terms of why those kids wouldn't be in class? Yeah, at this point, different school boards are, you know, recording, you know, there may be school boards that have that more granular level data, but in general, you know, or in any way that we can pull together, whereas Tara said that we can access publicly is not available, making it really difficult to intervene in a timely way. Do you think as parents, we think differently about our kids not being at school now than perhaps we did in generations past? Well, that's a good question.

I mean, and it's part of what we're actually studying is looking at parent values around attendance. I mean, we know that attendance and non-attentance is happening in a very complex world where, you know, school is shifting to their, you know, virtual learning, Google classrooms. So, you know, are people still valuing, having, you know, bodies, physical presence in schools?

We may need to redefine attendance. We may need to think about it differently. But at this point, we don't know. We don't have those studies in Canada to really understand what's going on. Part of this is also that in past, you just went to school. I mean, whether you were sick, you went to school, maybe you were facing bullying at school. But often that was, you just went to class and sucked it up. I mean, whether that was for good or bad, that was what was happening.

And we think differently about that now. And it's not just in terms of bullying, but also not sending kids to school if, you know, they're sneezing and coughing, for example. Yeah, well, I would just say that we don't actually know. We don't, you know, we don't have, we never collected attendance rates in a way that allows us to compare them then and now. So, you know, it may be that that's true, but it may also not be. And we're also talking about mental health more, which means that we're taking that into consideration. but maybe kids who were socially anxious were skipping school. You know, so it's really hard to draw comparisons between then and now.

What we do know, though, now is that school is important. It's important for kids to be there. And if we understand, you know, who's not in school, it allows us to, you know, act in a way that will protect them from the risk factors that they face when they're not in school. This is a provincial conversation. Education is a provincial jurisdiction. So if you had a standardized way of recording student absences across the country,

what would that give us? Well, I think that would give us some data. Again, you know, we're not necessarily advocating. We're not saying, okay, from now on, all kids need to be in school. The solution is physically in school. It's really about understanding what are the trends and patterns and non-attendance? So how are we defining attendance? When does it become problematic?

And then being able to compare across different jurisdictions, what interventions are working, how do we increase school attendance? And we know that the solutions are going to look really different because, you know, as Tara mentioned, there are so many reasons why kids are missing school. If transportation is an issue, you know, that's what needs to be addressed. If mental health is an issue, that's what needs to be addressed. But this is a very multifaceted issue that has really important public health consequences down the line. And it's an equity issue as well.

Tell me just, we're out of time, but tell me about those consequences. If this is, if we don't get a handle on this in terms of what's going on, let alone what the solutions are, what do you worried about? Well, I'm worried about short term, of course, you know, impacting academic learning, social emotional development, school is also, you know, a place where kids access. nutritional programs. We saw that so clearly during the pandemic when schools were closed. Certain groups are very disproportionately impacted by, you know, lack of access to those programs. But then in the long term, we know that attendance is related to graduation rates, to educational achievement, which is, you know, linked to health outcomes and economic productivity. So we're not just talking about an issue that's going to affect us now, but an issue that is going to collectively impact us, you know, when we look at the burden to society for those issues.

Natasha, thank you very much for this. Thank you for having me. Natasha McBarrerty is a Vanier Scholar at the University of Ottawa in Population Health, also co-founder of the Canadian School Attendance Partnership. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.