A Parentline Plus report has urged the government to tackle the underlying reasons behind truancy following an in-depth study of calls to its 24-hour free helpline, writes Clare Jerrom.

The majority of parents do not collude with their children’s behaviour, and are desperate for help to address the underlying causes of their child’s truancy, the research suggests. It also claims that truancy is often linked to other difficulties such as low educational achievement, substance misuse and crime.

Meanwhile, research by principal education welfare officer of Kingston local education authority, Ming Zhang, suggests prosecuting parents for their child’s truancy fails to get the children back to school.

He found there was no link between the number of court cases against parents and the improvement or reduction in school attendance rates between 1999 and 2002 having examined the statistics from 43 LEAs.

The findings show that while secondary school pupils seem to have some positive, although statistically insignificant, response to parental prosecution in terms of improvement of attendance, there is no such response from primary school children.

Zhang suggests that older pupils should be prosecuted for playing truant.

The truancy rate has increased by 15 per cent since Labour came to power despite the launch of £650 million worth of initiatives designed to combat the problem.

Government figures detailed in a written parliamentary answer show that 566,000 secondary school pupils played truant at least once last year, compared with 423,000 in 1996-97.