School effectiveness and truancy: a multilevel study of upper secondary schools in Stockholm

ABSTRACT Truancy is a problem associated with a range of negative consequences at the individual and societal level, both in the short and the long term. Few earlier studies have investigated the association between school effectiveness and truancy. The aim of this study is to examine the links between three teacher-rated features of school effectiveness – school leadership, teacher cooperation and consensus, and school ethos – and student-reported truancy. Data were collected in 2016 among 4,956 students and 1,045 teachers in 46 upper secondary schools in Stockholm. Results from two-level binary logistic regression analyses show that higher teacher ratings of the school leadership and of the school ethos (but not of teacher cooperation and consensus) are associated with a lower likelihood of truancy at the student-level, even when adjusting for student- and school-level sociodemographic characteristics. The findings indicate that effective school characteristics may contribute to reducing students’ inclination to play truant