Incidence of Truancy among Senior Secondary School Students in Epe Local Government Area, Lagos State, Nigeria: Implications for Counselling

Abstract

This paper examined the incidence of truancy among senior secondary school students in Epe Local Government Area of Lagos State and suggests ways counselling can be used to curb the problem. Three hypotheses were formulated to guide the study and the design was Ex-post Facto. The sample size was 119 Senior Secondary II students randomly selected from 5 out of the 22 public secondary schools in the local government area. An instrument titled “Incidence of Truancy among Secondary School Students” was used to collect data from the respondents. It had face and content validity through expert judgement and the reliability coefficient was 0.73. The data obtained was analyzed with the Z-test statistics. The results indicated that there is no significant difference between male and female students; urban and rural students and students from high and low socio-economic status homes in their indulgence in truancy. It was recommended that Form Masters/Mistresses should be more objective in taking class attendance and refer truants to guidance counsellors.