The Ministry of Education identified four categories of non-attendance that will allow progress in monitoring educational trajectories.
The Ministry of Human Capital, through the Secretariat of Education, coordinated an interjurisdictional seminar dedicated to analyzing school absenteeism at the secondary level. New tools based on nominal data were also presented to improve institutional management and strengthen student pathways.
The report presented, focused on absenteeism in secondary school , examines the magnitude and timing of absences and allows for the identification of differentiated patterns among students. It also provides key information for understanding attendance dynamics and designing more effective intervention strategies.
In this context, the four types of absenteeism identified in the report are as follows:
1) Regular and sustained attendance: students with stable attendance throughout the year and a low level of absences.
2) High absenteeism with eventual recovery: students who have more absences during parts of the year but return to regular attendance towards the end. This indicates reversible interruptions.
3) Progressive disengagement: absences that increase steadily until almost total cessation of attendance towards the end of the year.
4) Regular attendance with lower record coverage: stable attendance, but less frequent absences are recorded in the administrative database, affecting the pattern interpretation.
The analysis is based on over 1.9 million monthly records from selected departments.
Trends:
The study shows that high school absenteeism in the analyzed departments remained at levels close to 10%, with lower absenteeism in March and April and higher during the rest of the school year. At the same time, absences tended to be more frequent on Mondays and Fridays than on other days of the week.
Chronic absenteeism (students who missed 10% or more of school days) was around 35%.
The analysis identified three attendance patterns: the majority and most stable, with monthly attendance rates of 92%-93%, reflects a strong connection to the school (80% of students, in two coverage variations). A second pattern, present in 7.6% of students, is characterized by high but recoverable absenteeism, where absenteeism levels rise and then fall, indicating a moderate risk if no action is taken promptly. A third pattern, affecting 3% of enrollment, shows a sustained increase in absences toward the end of the year, indicating a process of progressive disengagement that requires early and specific interventions.
The report presents these patterns through sequence and cluster analysis, which allows attendance to be viewed as a dynamic process. This analytical tool differentiates brief interruptions from cumulative processes of school disengagement, offering key information for dropout prevention interventions.
Along these lines, the study is part of the early warning system project for strengthening educational pathways at the secondary level and represents a first exploratory experience seeking to leverage the enormous potential of administrative records. The intensive use of big data and evidence-based analysis opens new possibilities for informed decision-making aimed at reducing absenteeism and promoting school retention.
The meeting, organized by the Ministry of Education, focused on how advances in Educational Management Systems (SIGED) allow for the collection of nominal and daily attendance data. This new perspective is fundamental for identifying absenteeism patterns, anticipating disengagement or school dropout, and strengthening pedagogical and management support strategies.
The seminar included the participation of the Secretary of Education, Carlos Torrendell; the Undersecretary of Educational Information and Evaluation, María Cortelezzi; and the Secretary of the Federal Council of Education, José Thomas. Also present were government officials, academic experts, and international guests.
The study was presented by Florencia Sourrouille, National Director of Strategic Data Analysis and Dissemination of Educational Information, and included commentary from specialists Cecilia Calero (UTDT), Alejandro Ganimian (Harvard University), and Tamara Vinacur (IDB).
The meeting provided a forum for sharing jurisdictional experiences and regional perspectives: on the one hand, the challenges of addressing absenteeism were discussed by representatives from Córdoba, Jujuy, Mendoza, and Buenos Aires; on the other hand, progress in educational systems and experiences in Uruguay and Chile were analyzed.