Truancy is staying away from school without permission. Persistent truancy, truancy rates, tackle truancy.
In Britain parents can be fined or prosecuted for it, because the legal duty to secure attendance falls on them rather than on the child. Rates rose sharply after the pandemic closures and have not returned. Note truant, the person, from an old word meaning a beggar.
1nountruancyStaying away from school without permission.
“The school has sent letters home to parents because truancy is rising.”
truancy is an absence.
Proto-Indo-European
*terh₁-
Proto-Indo-European
*térh₁-tro-m
Proto-Celtic
*taratrom
Breton
truan — wretched
cel-gau
*trugan
Old French
truant
Middle English
truant
English
truant
English, today
truancy
Built from
From truant + -cy. truant The adjective and noun are derived from Middle English truant, truand, truaund (“(adjective) idle; tending to vagrancy (uncertain; may be a use of the noun); (noun) beggar; mendicant friar; vagrant, wanderer; worthless person, rogue, scoundrel; one who is absent without leave, truant; one who shirks duties”), from Old French truant, truand (“(adjective) beggarly; roguish; (noun) a beggar, vagabond; a rogue”) (modern French truand), probably of cel - origin, possibly from cel-gau trugan, or from Breton truan (“wretched”), from Proto-Celtic taratrom, from Proto-Indo-European térh₁-tro-m, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European terh₁- (“to drill, pierce; to rub; to turn”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA