It has been internationally argued that many contextual factors contribute to the promotion of students’ well-being (Ben-Arieh et al., 2014; Hernández-Torrano et al., 2021). This perspective allows us to focus on possible strengths within education systems rather than looking at schooling only from a deficit perspective. Compulsory education and a right to education is a general feature of modern welfare states, but there is a constant shadow of non-attendance. School attendance problems have been a frequent topic in the international research over decades (e.g. Heyne et al., 2019; Kearney et al., 2019; Reid, 2008, 2013; Ricking, 2003) and poor educational outcomes have been described as an important risk factor for future social and health problems, especially for children in social vulnerable situations (Forsman et al., 2016; Gauffin et al., 2013). However, salutogenic perspectives have also come into focus and there is a need to critically discuss how school and related systems can in a sustainable way address attendance problems and break pattern of exclusion (Bodén, 2013; Strand, 2013). Yet there is still very little research available that can help us comprehend the situation and guide school leaders and student health teams in their preventive work (Ekstrand, 2015). With this research on organisational strategies for and professional perspectives on school attendance we want to provide understandings of conditions for learning and well-being of diverse student groups in different European countries.
There are few studies that compare school attendance problems and organisational strategies in different European contexts (Keppens & Spryt, 2018). School systems answer to challenges and shape preconditions for school attendance in accordance with the overall logic within the respective school and welfare systems. That makes it interesting to study similar phenomena in different education systems. The here proposed symposium builds on an international comparative research project, financed by the Swedish Research Council on national, organisational, and individual dimensions of school attendance problems in four countries. The project applies a mixed method approach. The quantitative studies within the project on school attendance statistics showed that the countries we study have different ways of recording and reporting statistical information on absence, different ways of publishing relevant information, and different judgements on which level of absence is considered to be problematic. Some countries – in our sample, England (and also Japan) – have developed a system for collecting and disseminating information about school absence on a regular basis, while other countries have no national system (Germany), or collect national data occasionally on a non-regular basis (Sweden) (Kreitz-Sandberg et al., forthcoming).
With a starting point in some of the quantitative results of the project, this symposium will preliminarily engage with the qualitative case studies from three of the four studied countries, Sweden, Germany and the UK. The here introduced multi-site case studies explore and critically discuss dynamic relations between education and health and wellbeing. Multi-cite case studies are part of the empirical evidence gathered in the participating countries, many of them from urban contexts. The choice of countries can be related to welfare state systems in the tradition of Esping-Andersen (1990) who distinguished between so-called social democratic, conservative and liberal welfare state systems. The three countries have also different school systems: differentiated secondary education, single-track and comprehensive systems. The age group in focus are 15- to 17 year-old youths, in the transition between different school stages, including also academic and vocational tracks. The presentations provide preliminary results from studies in Sweden, Germany and the UK (England) and will be discussed from a critical and creative perspective with focus on the question what we as researchers from various fields can contribute through empirically grounded research.
