Socio-economic factors contributing to truancy in primary school learners. A case study of the Manzini region, Eswatini

Abstract

This study examines the role of socio-economic factors in influencing school attendance in the Manzini Region of Eswatini. It further examines the relationship between parental involvement, poverty, parents’ or guardians’ employment status, and truancy among primary school learners in the region. The study employed a mixed-methods approach and adopted Bronfenbrenner’s 1979 Ecological Systems theory, which emphasizes the interaction between individual, family, and societal factors in shaping an individual’s behavior. Thematic analysis was used to process the qualitative data, while SPSS was used for the quantitative findings. The study involved five principals, ten teachers, twenty students, and ten parents/guardians. The findings revealed that learners from low-income households, children of unemployed or informally employed parents, and those experiencing limited parental involvement were significantly more likely to engage in truancy. Inadequate access to school resources, peer influence, and family instability also emerged as strong predictors of absenteeism. The study concluded that truancy undermines educational outcomes, contributes to increased dropout rates, and perpetuates the cycle of poverty in families and society. The study challenged policymakers and educators to craft actionable, targeted interventions to mitigate socioeconomic factors that act as barriers to accessing and providing education. This study contributes to scholarship by providing empirical evidence on how socio-economic factors interact to influence truancy within the Eswatini context, where research is limited. It extends the application of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework to the problem of primary school absenteeism, thereby providing a contextualized understanding of the microsystem (family), mesosystem (school), and exosystem (community) influences on learner attendance.