Five of the 10 schools with the nation's worst attendance records are from the region, including two new academies in Leeds and Sheffield which were opened to transform the fortunes of struggling inner city schools.

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The new secondary school league tables show that a partnership of two schools in Leeds have the second and third worst attendance record in the country.

The Central Leeds Learning Federation was set up in September 2005 to run the City of Leeds School and Primrose High School. Today's league tables show that more than one in 10 half days were missed by pupils at both the schools making them the worst in the region.

City of Leeds pupils missed 10.7 per cent of half days while Primrose pupils missed 10.4 per cent. The national average is 1.4 per cent

The David Young Community Academy and the Sheffield Springs Academy also had among the worst attendance records in the country during their first school year while the troubled Ridings School in Halifax was also in the bottom 10.

Hull, Bradford and Sheffield also have several secondary schools in the worst 200 in today's table

Education Leeds's chief executive, Chris Edwards, said: "Leeds does not have a bigger issue with attendance than any other city of our size, but we are under no illusions about the size of the challenge some of our schools face.

"We are providing intensive support to these schools, working closely with young people, their families and communities.

"New techniques such as parenting programmes and behaviour contracts, and work to overcome different cultural attitudes to learning, are having an impact."

Liz Talmadge, executive headteacher of Central Leeds Learning Federation, said: "The two high schools in federation are working with some of the most challenging issues in the inner city of Leeds. Attendance is the highest priority for both schools and the focused work undertaken by teachers and advisors over recent months has seen an improvement on the 2006-7 figures.

"The federation is working closely with Education Leeds and the Department for Children , Schools and Families (DCSF) to reduce the unacceptably high levels of unauthorised absence. The key challenge is to engage parents and carers in understanding that good school attendance leads to higher levels of achievement for their children. Both schools have clear strategies in place to encourage parents to support their children by ensuring that they attend school regularly. Where this is not working more robust measures are taken.

"In this respect both City of Leeds and Primrose High School work closely with the attendance strategy team in following the DCSF fast track to prosecution process with parents of persistent absentees."

She said that in the first term of 2007/08 unauthorised absence had fallen in both schools.

David Young Community Academy's principal Ros McMullen also acknowledged that unauthorised absence at the school was too high but said it had improved compared with the record of the two predecessor schools, Agnes Stewart CE School and Braim Wood High School for Boys, which it took over from in September 2006.