Nor are trips to the hairdresser, they said.

Student absenteeism in Tasmanian schools is under the spotlight.

The figures include truancy but also include parents who take children out of classes for various reasons including illness, sickness in the family, other personal reasons or family holidays.

A new system brought in this year to help prevent chronic absenteeism - Education Information or the Edi program - monitors the attendance of every student in state schools.

Widespread change to the way parents and the wider community value education and school is also tipped as part of the solution.

A report released this year by The University of Western Australia titled "Every Day Counts" found that repeated school absence had a big impact on literacy and numeracy results.

If also found that the more school a child missed during their early years, the likely it was that they would continue to miss lots of school throughout their education.

This began from kindergarten, where days missed in kindy were then also missed in Year 1 and 2, to impact on their first NAPLAN tests.

Telethon Kids Institute research fellow Kirsten Hancock was involved in this research and said substantial learning gaps could be found in kids with low attendance.

"The kids who have low attendance rates have them as early as year one, and that follows through," she said.

"Having those absences in the early years means they miss out on certain parts of the curriculum, and when they miss out it is hard to get that in the later years.

"A key point is to try and get good attendance careers set right at the start.

"Schools can do a lot there to welcome families into their schools, perhaps by setting up play groups, introducing other ways of connecting with parents and young children, making schools central to a community."

The overarching point is that the lowered educational attainment could lead to less opportunities in work and social outcomes throughout an individual's lifetime.

In addition, a lack of attendance at school also brings frustrations and stresses to the class environment, where teachers must spend more time with students who fall behind, or deal with possible disruptive behaviours.

University of Tasmania human development lecturer JF said school was a protective factor against disadvantage later in life.

"It gives kids a routine, it gives them discipline," JF said.

"I would take the view that school is actually therapeutic. You sit, you stay, you greet, you learn social etiquette, there is a culture, but a kid taken out of this has significant social and behavioural problems because they don't know how to engage, participate or value authority."

Dr JF said the short term impacts of a child missing school, for instance falling behind in school, could be caught up on later in life through intensive learning programs, but the long term impacts are more widely felt.

"Absenteeism and truancy in the long term can lead to behavioural problems and some research suggests that it can lead to later delinquency or a commitment to adult anti-social behaviours."

For Dr JF the solutions lay with schools, parents and the community.

He provided an example where the business community in which a high truancy school existed were requested not to serve any school-aged child and instead ask them their name and what school they attended, and to contact the school.

In another instance teachers would drive around the community visiting malls and parks to look for the absent kids and send them back to school.

"I think schools haven't really spent time finding the correct model to address the issue. In other words they see absenteeism or truancy as a problem with the students," he said.

"They don't look at the whole picture - is the curriculum interesting? Is it a teacher factor, a student factor? A parent or community factor?"

Upper House members on the Legislative Council's education committee see absenteeism as an issue worthy of community discussion.

Elwick independent MLC Adriana Taylor, a former teacher, said the impacts of missing just one day of school, let alone cumulative days over a term or year, were huge.

"If you are not there you can't learn," Ms Taylor said.

"For instance if you miss a day where you learn how to do simple division then you have missed the learning building blocks.

"The next week the other students are building on that initial learning while the student that wasn't there gets further behind."

Ms Taylor strongly agreed with a whole-of-community approach.

"Schools do a great job of letting people know when their kids aren't at school but we still have a lot of families who don't see the importance of education.

"If a child says 'I don't feel like going to school' parents might let them stay at home because it is easier. It is a community job to convince parents that every child needs to be at school every day."

She suggested that retirees be brought into the schooling equation, to perhaps read with children, or that more funding be spent on school encouragement programs.

Windermere independent MLC Ivan Dean represents a regional area that has some of the lowest school attendance rates in the Northern region.

He said the law was too relaxed on school attendance, but acknowledged the difficulties faced by some families.

"Parents and family members might go through some tough times, and that in some regard reflects absenteeism, but they have to get over and above the hard times," he said.

"They have to realise that what this child gets out of school is going to put them in a better position moving forward, and will improve their circumstances in the long term. To attend school is going to be for the child's and the family's benefit."

Mr Dean said parents had to get involved in school life, and what happened within them.

"Some of them sadly push their kids out the door and are not too concerned whether they go to school or not," he said.

"At the end of the day it is the child that suffers."