Cause Of Truancy To Students

Omoegun (1995) in Musa, (2014) viewed that a child would rather prefer to spend most of his days in the midst of his peers where he would be happier and more relaxed and this gives room for undue peer influence particularly in antisocial behaviors like truancy. To Nigerian Teachers (2004), members of peer group do put inside their personal feeling and follow the dictates of peer in order to remain in group. Due to this strong feelings and attachment, peer group has generally been viewed as the vehicle through which students learn truant act. In some instances, truancy starts with peer influence and tobacco smoking (Wilcox, 2003:68-69). The research conducted by Smith, P.A (1996:59) shows that some truants abused drugs due to peer pressure.

(Khoza, 1997: 68) One factor that may cause of truancy to student is the bullying of his peer also. Bullying is defined as the behaviour that occurs when one or more individuals repeatedly inflict physical, emotional or verbal abuse on another (Fried and Fried, 2003:23).Physical abuse involves actions such as fighting, throwing an object at someone or taking someone’s money or lunch; verbal abuse may include name-calling, or an intimidating text message sent by mobile phone; emotional bullying may involve pointing, laughing at or socially isolating another child. Sexual bullying is also said to occur between male and female or can be male-to-male, but also female-to-female, for example, ridiculing a girl whose breasts jiggle when she runs (ibid:63).Insight into the phenomenon of bullying is important, not only due to its effect on the lives of victims, but also its effect on bullies. Research found that bullies engage in academic misconducts that include cheating and skipping school, while victims have higher rates of absenteeism (Dake, Price and Telljohann,

Negative attitudes displayed by some educators may drive certain learners out of the school. Researchers found that insults and humiliating remarks may lead to school non-attendance (Black, 1996:36; Edward and Malcolm, 2002:2; Porteus et al., 2000:11; Smith, P.A, 1996:54). More specifically, violence against students may result in higher level of absenteeism, greater truancy (Green, 2006) and increased likelihood of dropout (Leach and Mitchelle, 2006) which are described by Lewin (2007) as form of silent exclusion from school. All of which contribute to less effective learning. Level of absenteeism have been shown to increase with the severity of victimization which in turn has been related to depression, anxiety, sadness, loneliness and general low self-esteem (Rigby,