PARENTS are to receive warning letters over the next few weeks telling them they will face fines of up to £100 if they allow their children to truant.

Education chiefs in Bolton are this term introducing a system under which parents of persistent truants will be slapped with fines of £50. If parents do not pay within 28 days the fine will rise to £100.

Parents who take their children on holiday during term time without school authorisation will also be liable to receive a penalty notice. If, after 42 days, fines have still not been paid, parents will face prosecution and a possible jail sentence.

Fines will be issued to parents on an individual child basis. For example, if they take two children on holiday without school permission they would be fined £50 for each child, bringing the total fine to £100.

Principal Education Social Worker Ian Price said schools will be sending off warning letters telling parents they run the risk of a fine if they allow children to skip school.

He said: "We have got a meeting with pastoral care teachers in schools and they will be starting to issue parents with warnings telling them they run the risk of receiving a fixed penalty notice if their child's attendance does not improve." Before fines are handed out education bosses have to build up a dossier of evidence, proving a child has been a persistent truant. Once warned, parents have a minimum of 15 days to effect an improvement which has to be sustained.

Meetings are taking place with education social workers, schools and local education authority to hammer out the fine details of the scheme.

Mr Price said they will be working towards implementing a consistent policy across the borough, so a situation never arises where for example, one secondary refuses to allow a child to go on holiday during term time, while a younger sibling is allowed to go by their primary school.