A school in Aalborg has almost halved the share of pupils with high absence, as the latest PISA survey shows truancy rising sharply among Danish schoolchildren.
DR reports that staff at Sønderholm Skole in Aalborg Kommune do not recognize the picture of absent pupils drawn in the new PISA survey, which was published Tuesday. In the survey, 28 percent of pupils said they had skipped school within the past two weeks.
School leader Rune Træholt told DR that the figure surprised him. According to him, the Danish word for truancy, pjæk, is not part of everyday language at the school, and he cannot recall when it was last used.
For the past several years, the school has focused on reacting early to absence before it grows. Every second week, a school social worker visits to go through absence records together with the school’s wellbeing counsellor, per Træholt. They review individual pupil cases and try to spot absence before it escalates.
The school is also in close contact with teachers and reaches out to parents, so that high absence is not left undetected.
Absence nearly halved
In the 2023-2024 school year, 20 percent of the school’s just under 200 pupils had an absence rate above 10 percent. In the most recent school year, that share had fallen to 12.9 percent. For comparison, 24 percent of all pupils in Aalborg Kommune had absence above 10 percent in the 2024-2025 school year.
The national picture is broader. An analysis of the PISA 2025 data by VIVE, published on September 6, 2026, finds that 60 percent of Danish pupils report arriving late to school and 30 percent report skipping individual classes. The 28 percent who report missing a full school day is higher than in the other Nordic countries.
Berlingske, citing Ritzau, notes that the share of Danish pupils reporting a skipped school day has almost tripled since the 2012 PISA survey, from 10 percent to 28 percent. The report describes this as a marked increase in self-reported truancy.
Pupils at the school also take part in the effort. Oliver Munk, who is in 7th grade, told DR he does not believe he has ever skipped, and does not know anyone who talks much about it. Mathilde Jepsen from 8th grade said classmates pay attention to each other’s well-being, often moving in one large group and sharing eating tables.
Træholt described dialogue with parents as decisive. Some parents did not themselves feel that absence was high, but recognized the trend once it was discussed, he said. In some cases it had become a few more care days or shopping trips with the family.
