Ten parents at a Basildon school are to be prosecuted as education chiefs get tough on appalling truancy rates.

The rare step of bringing in an Essex County Council education welfare team to the newly-formed James Hornsby School was taken earlier this year, because of the high number of pupils failing to turn up for lessons.

Already this term 400 - almost half of all the Laindon school's pupils - have gone absent on at least one occasion because of sickness, playing truant or going on family holidays during school time.

An average number of pupils being absent in a term for a school of this size in Basildon is estimated to be about 100.

Parents of ten children will appear before Basildon magistrates on May 20.

Iris Pummell, chairman of Essex County Council?s education committee, said: "There were a large number of children causing problems with truancy.

"We have worked very closely with the school and have reduced it quite substantially. Some of the absenteeism was quite genuine, due to sickness for example, but some of it was not.

"There is a small group that has not worked with us, despite our efforts and so we have decided to deal with the problem in a way it was dealt with years ago."

At the beginning of the year the new Laindon School, which opened last September, was one of the first in the country to give out pagers to parents.

This allowed the 931-pupil school to get in touch with parents easily when students failed to show up.

The reasons for this term's poor attendance record have not yet been made clear and the headteacher was unavailable for comment.

Mrs Pummell, however, said she wanted to issue a message to pupils that it is worth their while going to school.

She said: "We need to get across to young people that they can achieve well. Absenteeism is making it very difficult for the teachers who have a lot of responsibility.

"When a child is not at school all sorts of things can happen to them."

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