Absenteeism in independent schools is not being adequately monitored, as reporting it depends on the “voluntary compliance of schools”, the Times of Malta has learnt.

In some cases, the authorities only found out that students were not attending school after the children were caught committing some crime and criminal action was taken against them.

While the procedures to report students who fail to attend school have been in place for years, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo confirmed there have been cases were students “fall under the radar” as the compliance with the procedures is voluntary.

“Although the procedure of reporting absenteeism is in place, it depends totally on the voluntary compliance of the schools. All schools registered in Malta are obliged to report students who miss more than three school days in a month, without authorisation, to the Social Work Services within the National School Support Services.

“There have been cases of students who fall under the radar and surface only when they are involved in crime and are brought to court by the police,” a ministry spokeswoman confirmed.

The issue was also acknowledged by Mr Bartolo when he was asked to comment on the case of a seven-year-old Nigerian girl who died last month.

Friends of the girl’s family said the government’s child protection team was alerted last year of the girl and her siblings’ absences from school. The minister said that the Education Department had been closely monitoring the girl’s absence.

He went on to point out that it was harder for the education authorities to monitor absenteeism in independent schools.

“We need to be careful and monitor the situation closely at all times. There have been cases where students, not in State schools, which we can truly monitor, were absent but were not detected by our system,” the minister told the Times of Malta

On Church schools, the spokeswoman said that the Social Work Service regularly communicates with the social workers employed by the Secretariat of Catholic Education, while a meeting with all the heads of non-State schools was also held recently.

According data published by the National Statistics Office, absenteeism in the 2014/2015 academic year numbered 152,129 school days in State schools. The figure fell to 24,376 days in the case of Church schools and 13,519 in independent schools.

In an attempt to cut down on absenteeism, parents are fined if their children are absent from school repeatedly and if they miss more than three days in a month without submitting a medical certificate. Parents face an initial fine of €7 and an additional fine of €2.33 for every other offence related to attendance.