The trigger for starting a business to resolve truancy was when my child stopped going to school when he was in junior high school.
He did not fit in with the class atmosphere or his homeroom teacher, and gradually stopped going to school.
I was at a loss as to whether I should talk to the school or the child, what I should do to get back on track, and where I was headed.
I repeatedly consulted with his homeroom teacher, who repeatedly told me, “First of all, it is important for him to go to school.” I felt his enthusiasm, but days passed by without any concrete solution.
We also met with a counselor. They used a general method of asking the child a series of questions and verbalizing “why he/she cannot go to school” and “what is the cause. Through the counseling, the child had an opportunity to verbalize his feelings, but on the other hand, I felt that the experience also led to self-denial.
Even though I tried to encourage him to go to school at home, when I saw the pained expression on his face, I felt insensitive to even ask, “Do you think you can go to school?” I felt that even asking the question, “Are you going to go to school? In the end, the days went on and on, with both parents and the child holding their breath and feeling that there was nowhere to go but up.
Three months later, we were able to resolve the situation once and for all by transferring the child to a different school. However, I was left with the feeling of being confronted with an unknown problem, wondering how I should have handled the situation, what was the right thing to do, and what kind of voice I should have given to the child.
A Country Where Truancy Continues to Increase
Since that time, I have been researching truancy after work and on weekends, attending parent-teacher conferences, and began studying psychological counseling in college.
It has been reported that hundreds of thousands of students are truant, and that the percentage is particularly high among junior high school students.
In schools, teachers and staff are becoming more aware of the need to prevent truancy, but they are not doing enough to deal with students who have stopped attending school, and once a student has stopped attending school, the problem is basically left to the family to solve.
So what are the parents who are left to solve the problem? Many parents gather information on the Internet and compare counseling services and free schools. Since there is no established solution when a child is truant, information has been scattered around for decades with no guidelines, reliable data, or evidence-based response methods integrated.
And the current situation is that hundreds of thousands of families who have been truant have to find individual solutions from scratch every time.
Development of re-entry programs
However, no matter how correct the theory is and how proven it is, it is impossible to know if it is effective until it is tried. We have been developing a re-entry program adapted to the school environment based on research results from around the world, and have completed the first version of the program, a beta version, in 2023.
We then introduced the purpose of the program to families struggling with non-attendance and asked volunteers to work with their children according to the program. As a result, all of the families were able to return to school, and most of them within two weeks, exceeding our expectations. This was the turning point when we decided to spread the re-entry support program to more families.
What kind of future do you want?
I do not think it is a problem at all for a child to make the choice not to attend school after consulting with a variety of people about the child’s future.
However, if there are families who want to attend school but do not know how to do so, if there are parents and children who are losing their smiles because of truancy, I believe this is a social issue that needs to be resolved.
There are causes for continued non-attendance, and by focusing on these causes, we can steadily move closer to solutions. And because we know the causes, we have been able to develop truancy prevention services.
Truancy is widespread. There are many services out there that claim to solve the problem, but their methods are often undisclosed and black boxed. They also cost hundreds of thousands of yen and place a heavy burden on both parents and children because of the long time commitment involved.
Our goal is to create a society in which many children who have been truant from school can return to school and regain their smiles. We also hope that society as a whole will recognize that truancy is not a special problem, and that it can be overcome with appropriate support.
That is why we want to develop this re-entry program into a service that is like a cold medicine for those suffering from truancy.
We can provide medicine that works because we know the cause of the disease. Also, in order to reach many families, it is important to provide them at a reasonable price.
To this end, we will continue to explain the mechanisms of diseases, communicate the efficacy of medicines, and keep prices reasonable. I am sure there are things we are not doing well, but we would be happy to have your support.
Noboru Aoyama, CEO, ToCo, Inc.