Scholar Absenteeism – A Continues Challenge of Contemporary Education

AbstractScholar absenteeism means a temporarily leaving of learning institution by the pupils without the teacher's acceptance and engaging in alternative activities more interesting or profitable. Causes of school absenteeism can be found at the educational institution (educational management incoherent and inconsistent or even aversive teaching style, low level of school culture etc.), at the family (disinterest in scholar situation of son/daughter, refusing to send children to school, the devaluation of formal education, poor material conditions etc.), individual (disengagement, orientation towards profitable activities etc.) and community (social control inappropriate, modest economic and cultural level etc.). Scholar absenteeism could be produce with parents’ consent, or, conversely, without their knowledge, which has very serious effects, both in personal and social education. To limit the phenomenon of school absenteeism, University of Oradea and Bihor County Scholar Inspectorate implemented between 2010 and 2012 a project called SCHOOL, MY CHANCE! co-financed by Social European Found. The objective retained for our paper is to identify the level in which students participating at the project have significantly reduced the number of scholar absences recorded in scholar documents at the end of first year of implementation. The lot of subjects was represented by 100 pupils who study in schools from Avram Iancu, Boge, Carasau, Les and Şuncuiuş, Bihor County. The research methodology was represented by the quantitative analysis of number of absences recorded in scholar grade book after the first year of project implementation, namely the qualitative interpretation of these results from psycho-educational perspective. The results showed us that, due to the involvement of pupils in extracurricular activities, number of absences recorded in scholar grade book decreased significantly to 20% of them, which is an important argument in favour of retaining these pupils in the formal education system