The job of tracking down youngsters skipping school in York falls to a team of seven education welfare officers. Education reporter Haydn Lewis took to the streets with one of them, Gaynor Norris, on a truancy sweep in Heworth to see just how bad the problem is in the city.

"I'M off ill", "I've been excluded" and "the school is shut" are all tried and tested excuses given to truancy officers out on patrol in York, by youngsters trying to pull a fast one by skipping school.

But the city's education welfare officers have heard it all before, and are determined not to let kids stay off school without good reason.

Gaynor Norris, a City of York Council education welfare officer, said:

"Nothing surprises me any more.

"You get all kinds of excuses, but they all tend to be porkies.

"We always check with the school to find out the truth, then it's up to our discretion as to whether we escort them back to school or home, depending on what's most appropriate."

It was a damp and miserable day when I joined Gaynor and PC Lisa MacKinnon, walking round the Heworth and Burnholme areas on the hunt for truants.

The weather turning to rain was one of the main reasons we thought that our sweep proved fruitless.

The police are involved, so children and their parents can be approached and questioned, and officers can carry out an arrest if necessary.

The post of youth action officer at York Police had been empty for much of the latter half of last year, so truancy sweeps were infrequent, but since PC MacKinnon's appointment there is now a dedicated officer to go out with the council to carry them out.

Truancy itself is not an arrestable offence, but PC MacKinnon said there was one occasion when an arrest was carried out, because the person being questioned was in possession of cannabis at the time.

Last year there seemed to be a worrying trend emerging, as a relatively high proportion of youngsters caught skipping school in York were with their parents.

Truancy figures from City of York Council showed out of the four anti-truancy sweeps conducted between September 2004 and January 2005, eight of the 28 youngsters stopped were with their parents.

But PC MacKinnon said: "The message seems to be getting across to parents that we are doing these patrols, and in the more recent sweeps we have done the children mostly seem to be on their own.

"The point is that children - and sometimes it can be primary school age children - should not be out wandering the streets, for their own safety as much as anything else."

There were 19 youngsters stopped in Acomb, three in the city centre, two in Clifton and four in Tang Hall.

During the academic year 2003/2004, the council carried out 14 sweeps, and 88

children were stopped. Of those, 54 were boys and 34 were girls, with 67 from secondary schools and the rest primary.

Of the 88 stopped, 30 had no valid reason for being absent from school.

Mrs Norris said: "This seems to have dropped off a bit so far this year, and we seem to be getting the message across."

In the past, some parents said they had taken their child out of school because it was their birthday or they simply couldn't get their youngster to go to school.

She said: "This sort of condoned absence is not acceptable at all, and it happens quite often because parents themselves have had a bad experience with education when they were at school.

"If they are genuinely ill, they should be kept at home and not dragged out shopping.

"Just because it's your child's birthday doesn't mean you can keep them off either."

Updated: 08:57 Wednesday, January 18, 2006