A MAJOR crackdown is to be launched against truancy in Bolton during the run-up to Christmas.

It was announced as figures were revealed showing that the number of children going missing from secondary schools in the borough went up slightly last year -- despite efforts to tackle the problem.

Education workers will team up with police in the new campaign. It is part of a nationwide drive to cut down on truancy and will involve trawls of town centres and shopping centres.

Children seen out and about when they should be in school will be targeted.

In May of this year in Bolton, 229 youngsters were caught during a two-week sweep. Nationally, 12,000 children were caught playing truant.

Half the children missing school for no good reason were accompanied by their parents.

Excuses they gave to police and education welfare officers included the need to "buy a new hamster".

In the last school year in Bolton, the figure for unauthorised absence from secondary schools went up from 8.8 per cent to 9 per cent.

However, education officials say Bolton figures include every report of unauthorised absence and instances can be interpreted differently by different school heads.

For example, a child arriving 20 minutes late without a note could be classed as unauthorised absence by one school, but a different school would not be as strict.

The national truancy figure, calculated as the percentage of half-days lost to unauthorised absence, remained static at 0.7 per cent. The number of Bolton primary school children absent from school without permission dropped from 5.6 per cent to 5.5 per cent.

From a total of 16,908 secondary school pupils in the town, 3,117 notched-up some form of unauthorised absence.

At primary schools, 2,198 youngsters out of a total of 21,624, were off school without permission at least once.

The government has announced a "fast-track" prosecution process for parents of persistent truants, while in Bolton education officials are pursuing legal action against nine parents for failing to send their children to school.

Chief principal social worker, Ian Price, said: "There's been a shift in emphasis and whereas we used to have to justify prosecuting a parent, we now have to justify not prosecuting a parent."