Japanese Schools Use AI to Improve Attendance
A Japanese city has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to try to tackle the problem of school avoidance among pupils.
According to Kyodo News, in 2022, almost 300,000 pupils in elementary school and junior high school across the country didn't attend classes for 30 days or more.
That number has been rising in recent years, and the city of Toda in Saitama prefecture has been trying to improve the situation using AI.
Eighteen schools trialed a system that uses data to predict the students who were most likely to miss school. The trial ended in March.
The system looked at things like previous attendance records, academic results and health conditions, as well as the number of times a pupil had visited the school nurse or been involved in bullying.
The system also looked at data from pupils in the past who had stopped attending school.
It then predicted which students were at risk of regular non-attendance, allowing the school to intervene.
Teachers also used their own judgment when given the results from the AI software. The system identified almost 2,000 pupils who were at high risk of regular non-attendance.
From these, members of staff were able to decide that 265 of these pupils were at particular risk and needed special attention.
The local education board said the data was only used to assess their risks of non-attendance, and not for any other reasons.
Parents were also able to choose whether they wanted their child's data to be used in the trial project.
The number of pupils in Japan absent from school for at least 30 days increased every year between 2012 and 2022.
Rates of school avoidance jumped during and after the coronavirus pandemic, and it was more common among junior high school students than those in elementary school.
In 2022, according to Nippon.com, the most common reasons for not attending school were feelings of lethargy and anxiety.
