30,000 Yorkshire pupils regularly play truant

One-in-20 pupils in the region regularly missed school in the 2012/13 academic year.

This was one of the highest figures in the country with only schools in the North East having worst attendance records.

Pupils are classed as being persistently absent if they miss 15 per or more of their education. It includes both unauthorised and authorised absences from school.

Evidence shows that when pupils miss between 10 and 20 per cent of their education only 39 per cent get five A* to C GCSE grades including English and maths.

This compares to 73 per cent of pupils who miss less than five per cent of school.

This is a particular concern in Yorkshire where the standards achieved in reading and writing lag behind the rest of the country.

The Yorkshire Post has launched its Turning the Page campaign to promote the importance of literacy and of children developing a love of reading and writing.

In Yorkshire there were 32,945 pupils - five per cent of the total - classed as persistently absent in 2012/13 according to the figures released yesterday. This was an improvement on 2011/12 when the figure was 5.6 per cent.

Barnsley had the highest level of persistent absentees in Yorkshire with 6.8 per cent of pupils placed in this category.

In Sheffield the figure was 5.9 per cent and in Hull and Bradford it was 5.8.

However Hull’s has dropped dramatically in less than 10 years. In 2007 around one-in-five pupils were classed as persistently absent.

The data published by the Department for Education (DfE) shows that Yorkshire has the highest level of unauthorised absence in schools of any Government region in England.

Figures show 1.3 per cent of lessons are missed through unauthorised absence compared with a national average of 1.1 per cent.

However the level of overall absence is almost the same as the national average.

This suggests that schools in Yorkshire are being stricter in refusing to authorise absences from school.

The figures record levels of absence and truancy for the 2012/13 year before the Government tightened up the guidelines.

In the past heads had the discretion to give parents up to 10 days of absence during term time.

In August, however, the DfE said that schools should only give permission for absence during school in “exceptional circumstances.”

Education Secretary Michael Gove said: “There is no excuse for skipping school. We have taken action to reduce absence by increasing fines and encouraging schools to address the problem earlier.”

“Today’s figures show we are making progress, with 130,000 fewer pupils regularly missing school under this Government.

There have been more than 1,000 sets of parents prosecuted for failing to send their children to school in Yorkshire.

Tables also show that more than 7,000 penalty notice fines were issued to parents in the region as schools and council crackdown on those allowing children to play truant or who pull them out of school without permission.

Last year the DfE increased the amount parents could be fined for truancy from £50 to £60 and from £100 to £120 if the fine was not paid within 28 days. Across Yorkshire there were 7,168 fines issued. The majority of these were paid within 28 days. However there were 1,003 cases where parents were prosecuted after failing to pay.

Nationally statistics also show a steep rise in the number of parents prosecuted for failing to pay their penalties, with almost 8,000 cases taken to court. The number of penalty notices, collectively worth millions of pounds, increased by more than a quarter in the space of one school year.