A lack of school transport could be one of the main reasons that truancy is becoming an issue in Kiribati.
The Ministry of Education has put some work into researching why students are skipping school and the Ministry's Danietta Apisai says one of the challenges they have is communicating with parents.
Ms Apisai the senior education officer for secondary schools, says phone connections can be unreliable and many students who reach high school level have to move away from home to attend schools on the bigger islands.
She says the other issue is the lack of a regular school bus service.
"We do have problems with transportation because private transport usually don't encourage picking up of students because they pay less. We are trying to provide school transport but there is the issue of providing enough for all the students."
Danietta Apisai says parents can be fined for not making their children go to school but because they don't have dedicated truancy officers it's often difficult to follow up on each case.
