School Absenteeism Case Study
Research Questions
1. How do maternal common mental disorders (CMD) and child emotional and behavioural disorders (EBD) affect child cognitive development and educational outcomes by age 8 to 9 years?
2. What is the acceptability and feasibility of an adapted school-based intervention to mitigate the effect of maternal and child mental health problems on school absenteeism?
Rationale
Childhood experiences are of profound importance for laying down the essential solid foundations for child development, well-being and later academic success (1, 2). Better educational attainment and academic success begins also with early regular school attendance, in that it gives students a chance to interact with peers, the content taught and adapt to a school environment. On the other hand, school absenteeism serves as a pathway to entire drop-out and poor academic achievement (3). In turn this can lead to a population that is …show more content…
The effect of school absenteeism is more profound in developing countries like Ethiopia, where compensating for a missed lesson is unlikely due to the highly limited access to learning resources. Thus, regular school attendance is the foremost way to learn curriculum-relevant content. In older children, absenteeism can be associated with risk behaviours, such as use of drugs, alcohol and juvenile delinquency (5). Factors associated with school absenteeism are multifaceted and highly interwoven. Parental physical and mental health (6), economic status, education, child wellbeing, school phobia, bullying (7) and child EBD (8) are some of the identified contributory factors in high-income countries. From my PhD work, nested within a prospective population-based cohort study in rural Ethiopia, maternal
1. How do maternal common mental disorders (CMD) and child emotional and behavioural disorders (EBD) affect child cognitive development and educational outcomes by age 8 to 9 years?
2. What is the acceptability and feasibility of an adapted school-based intervention to mitigate the effect of maternal and child mental health problems on school absenteeism?
Rationale
Childhood experiences are of profound importance for laying down the essential solid foundations for child development, well-being and later academic success (1, 2). Better educational attainment and academic success begins also with early regular school attendance, in that it gives students a chance to interact with peers, the content taught and adapt to a school environment. On the other hand, school absenteeism serves as a pathway to entire drop-out and poor academic achievement (3). In turn this can lead to a population that is …show more content…
The effect of school absenteeism is more profound in developing countries like Ethiopia, where compensating for a missed lesson is unlikely due to the highly limited access to learning resources. Thus, regular school attendance is the foremost way to learn curriculum-relevant content. In older children, absenteeism can be associated with risk behaviours, such as use of drugs, alcohol and juvenile delinquency (5). Factors associated with school absenteeism are multifaceted and highly interwoven. Parental physical and mental health (6), economic status, education, child wellbeing, school phobia, bullying (7) and child EBD (8) are some of the identified contributory factors in high-income countries. From my PhD work, nested within a prospective population-based cohort study in rural Ethiopia, maternal