Germany Plans to Scrap Phone Sick Leaves Amid Rising Absence with Palki Sharma

Probably most Indians or even the rest of the world find this very strange that work absenteeism is made so easy in Germany.

(224) Germany Plans to Scrap Phone Sick Leaves Amid Rising Absence | Vantage with Palki Sharma | N18G - YouTube

Chronic student Absenteeism Is Still a Struggle in many US cities

Bad news! What are these absent students doing? 

Are many of these absent students learning by alternative ways (e.g. home schooling, online learning)?

"New RAND surveys of school district leaders and American youths reveal several key insights about this persistent challenge:

• Chronic absenteeism in the 2024–2025 school year remained above pre-pandemic levels.
• In roughly half of urban school districts, more than 30 percent of students were chronically absent. That’s a far higher share of students than in rural or suburban districts.
• One-quarter of youths do not think being chronically absent is a problem.

..."

Policy Currents Newsletter: August 14, 2025 | RAND

Schools are getting aggressive to combat persistent and considerable student absenteeism

How much is this absenteeism is possibly due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic?

"Around one in four students nationally was chronically absent—a commonly used metric of those who miss at least 10% of school, typically 18 days—in the 2022-23 school year, according to an analysis of 24 states with available data compiled by FutureEd. Before the pandemic, the nationwide average was closer to one in seven students. Schools are rolling out marketing campaigns trumpeting the importance of being in class, sending staff to visit homes and even offering teachers financial incentives. Educators are eager to reduce the rates of chronic absenteeism because students who miss class are falling behind academically and, in many states, schools receive funding based on attendance."

"... Most states showed some recovery from the pandemic-related spike in absenteeism in the 2021-22 school year. But the recovery has been modest. Of the 27 states that have released 2022-23 absenteeism data, 17 reported improvements in chronic absenteeism rates of five percentage points or fewer. ...
Chronic absenteeism often signals that students are experiencing untreated health needs, transportation problems, mental health issues, or other significant challenges. When many students attend school irregularly, teachers can’t move through the curriculum at their usual pace, which hurts the academic progress of students who are attending regularly as well as absentees. ...

As of mid-October 2023, Rhode Island was the only state that had developed a publicly available, real-time dashboard that could spot the number of students in each school who were on track to miss more than 10 percent of the school year."

The Wall Street Journal What's news

Tracking State Trends in Chronic Absenteeism