Number of absent school days rises by over 4%

The number of absent days in compulsory education during the 2016/2017 academic year totalled 531,729, an increase of 4.6% when compared to the previous academic year, the National Statistics Office said yesterday. The highest number of absent days were recorded in secondary education.

In a press statement for World Children’s Day, celebrated every year on November 20, the NSO said that as at the end of 2017, total resident population stood at 475,701.

Nearly 17% of the resident population were children aged between 0 and 17 years. Statistics compiled by the NSO show that the total number of children stood at 79,163, of these, 70,709 were Maltese.

The 0-17 population segment saw a decrease of 16.4% over the past 17 years. The majority of persons aged 0-17 resided in the Northern Harbour District (29.9%), followed by the Northern District (17.5%) and the Southern Harbour District (16.8%).

During 2017, more than 95% of fathers with children between the age of 0 and 17 years were employed. On the contrary, 61.1% of mothers were estimated to be employed and a further 35.6% were inactive. Additional results from the Labour Force Survey also indicate that 47 % of children between 0 and 17 years lived in private households where both parents work.

Data collected through European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey in 2017 estimates that 21.2% of children aged up to 17 were at-risk-ofpoverty. Of the mentioned age group, the highest poverty rates were among those aged 10 to 14 and 15 to 17 at 28.5 and 23.6% , respectively. Furthermore, 22.8% of those aged 0-17 were at-risk-ofpoverty or social exclusion. The most vulnerable children were aged 10-14, in which case the rate was of 30.6%.

The data also shows that most households with children aged 017 lived either in an apartment or a flat. There were only 1,790 households with children within the mentioned age group living in detached houses. Analysing expenditure patterns of households without children and households with at least one child aged 0-17, as extracted from the 2015 Household Budgetary Survey, reveals that the latter group spends more on almost every item. Households with children spent approximately 18.3% of their total expenditure on Food and non-alcoholic beverages, followed by Transport (15.7%) and Clothing and footwear (8.9%).

During academic year 2016/2017, a total of 55,471 children aged between 0 and 16 were enrolled in Pre-Primary, Primary and Secondary Education. More than half of these (31,851) were enrolled in State schools, followed by 16,264 in Church schools and 7,356 in Independent schools.

The majority of students (50,069) were of Maltese nationality. Out of a total of 5,371 students of a foreign nationality, 764 were British, 739 were Italian and 627 were Libyan. The number of absent days in compulsory education during academic year 2016/2017 totalled 531,729, an increase of 4.6 per cent when compared to the previous academic year. The highest number of absent days were recorded in secondary education.

Total trips undertaken by outbound tourists for 2017 amounted to 572,500. Of these, 4.9 per cent or 28,245 trips were carried out by children aged 0-14. A decrease of 10.5 per cent was noted in this age category when compared to 2016. In 2017, Italy and the United Kingdom remained the two most popular destinations, with a joint share of 57.3 per cent of total outbound tourist trips carried out by those aged between 0 and 14.