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266 chapter 7: school contexts
year or fewer. Generally, teachers reported sending home reports somewhat
less frequently than meeting or talking with parents about the child’s progress
in reading.
As shown in Exhibit 7.10, parents reported discussing their child’s
classroom reading work with him or her quite frequently—every day or almost
every day for 44 percent of students, on average, and once or twice a week
for an additional 35 percent. Only 7 percent of students had parents reporting
never or almost never discussing classroom reading with their child.
What Are the School Attendance Levels and Climate Characteristics?
Because persistent student absenteeism can disrupt learning and retard
learning progress, PIRLS asked school principals to what degree absenteeism
was a problem in their schools. Exhibit 7.11 presents trends in the percentage
of students in schools where the principal reported that student absenteeism
was not a problem, a minor problem, a moderate problem, or a serious
problem. The exhibit shows the percentage of students in 2006 in each of
these categories, together with their average reading achievement, and
for countries that also participated in PIRLS 2001, the change in student
percentages over the intervening 5 years. Exhibit 7.11 also displays graphically
the 2001 and 2006 percentages of students in schools where the principal
reported that absenteeism was not a problem.
On average across countries, most students were in schools where
principals reported that absenteeism either was not a problem (37% of
students) or was a minor problem (40%). Countries with the least attendance
problems included Hong Kong SAR, Chinese Taipei, Scotland, Austria,
Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium (Flemish), where 60 percent
or more of students were in schools where absenteeism among fourth-grade
students was not a problem. The percentage of students in this category
increased since 2001 in the Russian Federation, Iceland, and Macedonia,
and decreased in France, the Canadian province of Ontario, Romania, and
Morocco. Although on average across countries, only 9 percent of students
were in schools with serious absentee problems, more than 20 percent of