Once referred to lightly as bunking off, truancy has now been rebranded as the problem of unauthorised absence and is apparently costing the country millions of pounds.

Tomorrow, the Department of Children, Schools and Families is to publish the figures for the last school year and while some are predicting there may be minor year-on-year improvements, the results are unlikely to worry those persistent offenders who simply refuse to enter the school gates.

The recent Misspent Youth report by New Philanthropy Capital showed that in the UK there are 200,000 regular truants, each costing the taxpayer £44,468 over their lifetime, and a snapshot of the problem in Yorkshire suggests it's one which is causing increasing cause for concern.

At the start of the year, Hull came top of a league of truancy shame with the Department for Education and Skills claiming one in every five of the authority's pupils regularly skipped school. Hull Council questioned the validity of the figures and demanded a recount, but even in those areas which boast attendance rates close to or above the national average there is little to be complacent about.

In June, during a one-day sweep of the streets of Sheffield, more than a third of the 67 children stopped failed to provide a valid reason for missing classes. Despite spending £900m on anti-truancy measures in 2005 the Government was
forced to admit truancy rates were at their highest level for
10 years with 44,000 pupils absent every day during the school year.

"It is a problem, but one we have to get into perspective," says Joanne Pollitt, deputy head at Hemsworth Arts and Community College, at Hemsworth, near Pontefract. "Teenagers like to rebel, but most of those who do play truant are caught, and the shock of their parents finding out is enough to ensure they don't do it again. Persistent offenders are a small minority, but obviously they are much more difficult to deal with.

"When they are out on the streets these children are easily identified by their uniform and it does reflect badly on the school, but people forget about the vast majority of pupils who are in class and who want to learn. In this situation, knee-jerk reactions aren't helpful."

In recent months there have been a number of high-profile cases where parents have been forced to bear the brunt of their child's absence. In July, a mother of a 14-year-old who had only attended school once in nearly four months was told she could face jail and, a few months earlier, a judge sentenced another mother, whose teenage son persistently played truant, to 10 weeks in prison adding that she had "failed the boy as if she had not clothed or fed him".

While it is these worst case scenarios which inevitably hit the headlines, after Schools Secretary Ed Balls outlined his vision for improving educational standards in a letter to every head in the country, more and more groups are calling for a stick and carrot rather than shock and awe approach to the problem.

One such scheme, School-Home Support, which operates in Yorkshire and the Humber works with a broad range of children from six-years-old dealing with problems such as domestic violence, substance abuses and anti-social behaviour which are often at the root of absenteeism, and many heads have signed up with Truancy Call, which automatically alerts parents if the child fails to arrive in registration.

"Previously we relied on a laborious manual system where class registers were checked against form registers to try to catch those who were coming in for morning and afternoon registration and then disappearing," adds Joanne Pollitt, whose school has been using Truancy Call for the last four years. "Now the amount of time our staff has to spend on tracking truancy is vastly reduced and, hopefully, it gives parents some comfort to know that if their child doesn't arrive they will be sent a text message immediately, rather than finding out hours or days later.

"The school also has quite a sophisticated CCTV camera system and everyone knows that if they leave the grounds with out authorisation it's very easy for us to check up on them.

"On paper it sounds quite Orwellian, but for us it's much more about the safety of our pupils and generally parents who rightly feel the school has a responsibility to look after their children are very reassured."

The school is also in the processes of launching a poster campaign featuring the faces of former pupils alongside how well they did at GCSE and how many days absence they had, which is hoped will highlight the relationship between attendance and success.

"Some people are under the impression that a 90 per cent attendance record is fine because if they got 90 per cent in anything else it would be a great mark," adds Joanne. "Sadly it's not as simple as that, and what we continually point out to our pupils is that 17 days off a year, whether it's authorised or unauthorised, can cause them to drop a grade at GCSE."

However, plans are being mooted to force teenagers to stay in education until they are 18, with the threat of court action or fines for those who fail to abide by the new rules, and this has further raised fears of an
increase in the problem of mass truancy.

In wake of the Government announcement, which claimed the move was to reduce the numbers of those not in education, employment or training, the Professional Association of Teachers chairman Geraldine Everett claimed the move could criminalise thousands of youngsters.

"Here is a government that has toyed with the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 in order to promote a greater sense of citizenship amongst our young people," she told the organisation's annual conference in Harrogate.

"Yet it proposes to extend compulsory education or training to 18. Enforcement could lead to mass truancy further disruption to other pupils and staff and, if the enforcement measures are imposed, it may even be needless criminalisation."

According to many educationalists, the key is not using the weight of the law to force pupils in through the school gates, but ensure they have reason to stay once they are in the classroom.

"Over recent years we have tried to make the curriculum as flexible as possible and we do offer a lot of vocational qualifications which we treat with as much importance as maths and science," adds Joanne. "Historically there was a tendency to allow pupils who didn't excel at traditional academic subjects to slip through the net and, unsurprisingly, they became frustrated with failure.

"This school has worked hard to address those problems and we now have an active construction department and hairdressing salon which not only allows pupils to study vocational subjects, but will hopefully help address the very real skills shortage we have in this area."

For all the encouragement by teachers and for all the efforts made to ensure every single school-age pupil accesses their right to education, a small, yet hardcore number of families
will resist any offer of olive branches.

"Sadly there is a small group of parents who do not respect education, and they come not just from deprived circumstances but from among the better off as well," says a spokesman for the National Union of Teachers.

"This attitude seriously damages children's future prospects and leaves them vulnerable to the temptations and dangers of the streets."