Editing Truancy (section)

=== Israel ===
In [[Israel]], Attendance Officers (AO) are key figures helping students cope with difficulties of adjustment in school, which can cause them to drop out of the education system altogether. AOs are employed by the local authority, as authorized by the [[Ministry of Education (Israel)|Minister of Education]], and their role is to ensure that the Compulsory Education Law is implemented in educational institutions for all 15 years of [[Compulsory education|compulsory schooling]].  In recent years, efforts have been made to professionalize and structure the role of attendance officer.  A 2016 study of the AO role found there had been a change in the focus of the AOs' work – from concentrating on students who do not regularly attend an educational framework to intervention at an earlier stage with students who are still in a formal educational framework, but are experiencing adjustment difficulties. The data over the period from 2006 to 2016 indicated a decline in the relative percentage of students not in formal education ([[Dropping out|dropouts]]) out of all students in the care of AOs, and that most of those in the care of an AO did attend a formal framework.  At the end of the period of AO intervention, 38% of the students who were not in an educational framework when the AO began work with them had returned to a formal framework. Among those who had been in a framework at the start of work but were contending with various difficulties, almost 90% were still in the framework at the end of the intervention.  Finally, the data noted the multiple difficulties facing AOs working with the [[Negev Bedouin|Bedouin]] population and with students in East Jerusalem, as well as the limited resources available to them.<ref>Ruth Baruj-Kovarsky, Viacheslav Konstantinov, and Dalia Ben-Rabi.  ''[https://brookdale.jdc.org.il/en/publication/attendance-officers-israel-analysis-data-decade-work-school-dropouts-disengaged-administrative-files-2005-2015/ Attendance Officers in Israel – Analysis of Data from a Decade of Work with School Dropouts and Disengaged Students (Administrative Files 2005–2015)]''. Jerusalem: Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute (2018).</ref>