ALMOST 20,000 school days were lost during the spring term in Rochdale as pupils skipped classes.

New figures released by the government show that Rochdale was the 19th worst performing authority for primary and secondary schools in terms of truancy.

The town had one of the highest rates in the country for pupils missing lessons without permission through truancy, family holidays or other reasons, the figures suggest.

Overall, 86,251.5 out of a total of 1,338,542.5 days were missed through absences, 20,210 of these were unauthorised and 66,041.5 were authorised.

The statistics revealed that 1.51 per cent of sessions were missed due to unauthorised absences with only Knowsley, Manchester and Blackpool having higher rates in the North West. The average figure for the region was 1.05 per cent.

Absences can only be authorised by headteachers and if a valid reason is not given by a parent or guardian, the headteacher can refuse to sanction it.

Rochdale Council encourages headteachers to challenge any instances where they believe that a child could have been in school but did not attend, even when a parent makes an excuse.

The authority said that the figures were an improvement on last year’s results, when overall absence was running at 7.27 per cent.

The council also issued 212 penalty notices to parents during the last school year to tackle persistent absences.

Ann Tipton, the council’s head of learners and young people, said: "We are very pleased to see that more children and young people are in school. This represents a lot of good work by staff in schools, by the Education Welfare Service and by parents.

"As part of this, we have issued penalty notices and taken more court actions where there have been individual long-standing problems.

"We know that good attendance is a vital part of doing well at school and we will be looking to continue this progress."