Chronic absenteeism is a critically important issue in high school education. Attendance has long been a key indicator of engagement, while international and Canadian research consistently show it is highly predictive of beneficial long-term outcomes such as higher graduation rates and access to post-secondary education.

Across Canada, absenteeism rates have been surging for years, forcing governments and school boards to try to find a way to reduce them. For example, only 40 per cent of teens met the attendance standard for high school in Ontario in the 2024-25 school year.

That prompted Paul Calandra, the provincial minister of Education, to launch a plan to address the problem by tying a percentage of Grade 11 and 12 marks to attendance.

Absenteeism is rising, but the old pattern is changing

That’s problematic because it is disconnected from the evidence about the causes of absenteeism or effective interventions. It also falls short because the reasons for absenteeism are complex and reflect an interdependent mix of child, family, school and peer factors.

Recently, though, the long-standing direct relationship between absenteeism and graduation rates seems to be weakening. It’s not clear why but the data indicate governments may need to shift their approach to deal effectively with the problem.

There has been little research on the impact of steeply rising absenteeism on students’ broader academic progress.

Our team was particularly concerned about the possibility that if historical relationships between absenteeism and graduation rates hold, we could see the........

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