Chronic absenteeism is a continuing challenge for many school principals. After peaking during COVID, the number of students who are consistently missing school appears to be improving, but progress has been painfully slow. In the 2022-23 school year, chronic absenteeism rates were still 75% higher than typical levels before the pandemic. And while chronic absences receive the lion’s share of attention, they’re not the only attendance issue that impacts students’ performance: in-school absenteeism has equally problematic repercussions, but it doesn’t receive the same attention.

Read on to uncover why this issue often goes unexamined and how a digital hall pass helps schools address it.

The Often-Overlooked Problem of In-school Absenteeism

Districts and schools carefully track student attendance. This is largely because of the correlation between attendance and academic outcomes (and, of course, the realities of funding in public education). As a result, tracking attendance is a given. Many student information systems (SIS) even provide attendance tracking, making it easy for schools to have a single source of truth about which students showed up that day.

But what about students who are at school, but hardly ever in class?

These in-school absences—time spent wandering the hallways, secretly meeting up with friends, and generally avoiding the classroom—have traditionally been difficult to track. Yet, a student who misses just 15 minutes of class per day five days a week will miss the equivalent of one full day of instruction each month, and almost a full week of class time every semester.

Why Lost Instructional Time Doesn’t Receive as Much Attention as Chronic Absenteeism

Unlike chronic absenteeism, lost instructional time isn’t frequently mentioned as a cause of poor student outcomes. Yet, we know when students aren’t engaged in learning, regardless of when or why, their academic performance will suffer. Perhaps one of the reasons missed instructional time is so rarely explored is because schools have traditionally lacked a way to track and monitor it.  

No Standardized Tracking System

All schools have established processes for monitoring attendance. However, many don’t have a system for tracking time spent in school but outside the classroom.

Hall passes are the mechanism most schools use to manage this type of student movement. Yet, many schools still rely on paper hall passes or verbal teacher approval when a student requests to leave class. These manual processes make it nearly impossible to collect reliable data on how frequently students are missing instructional time, and for how long.

Limited Visibility for School Administrators

A principal can easily pull reports on student attendance. But if you want to know how much class time is lost to hall pass misuse or abuse, where do you start? Without a reliable record of how many hall passes are being issued each day, which students are using them, and for how long, you can’t know for sure if in-school absenteeism is a problem or not.

Bottom line: When a student skips school entirely, it’s accurately recorded. When a student is at school, but regularly misses class time, it’s often not recorded. Yet, these short, frequent absences add up over time and often produce similar negative outcomes, all without the school even identifying a problem.

Know How Much Class Time Students Are Missing with a Digital Hall Pass

Principals are blown away when they first see a digital hall pass. The ability to see at any time who’s using hall passes and for what locations is a game changer. But that’s just the beginning of what’s possible.

A digital hall pass also provides digital records of hall pass usage. With this data, you can identify “frequent flyers” who are always out of class and begin to uncover connections between lost time and poor academic performance. You can see exactly how much time students are spending outside the classroom. You can also share this data with students and family to validate concerns.

For example, the report shown below from Securly Pass reveals exactly how many passes have been issued, which students have requested those passes, and how much time each student has spent using them. 

Keep Students in Class and Engaged in Learning with a Digital Hall Pass

In-school absences are an overlooked problem that negatively impact student learning and academic outcomes. By implementing a digital hall pass system, schools can finally track, manage, and minimize time spent out of class, while also creating a more structured, safe, and focused learning environment.

With Securly Pass, you can understand the impact of lost instructional time, plus a whole lot more: 

• Have real-time visibility into hall pass usage
• Maximize instructional time
• Improve school safety
• Reduce disciplinary referrals
• Keep students accountable

Check out this blog to hear how 5 school principals transformed their schools with a digital hall pass.