PARENTS of youngsters who persistently play truant could be facing tougher action as the Government announces more crackdowns.

The announcement comes after figures revealed there has been no improvement on truancy in the past year, despite town centre sweeps by police and increased use of swipe-card registration.

Junior education minister Stephen Twigg has announced a fast-track prosecution process for parents of persistent truants and daily truancy sweeps in "hotspot" areas.

But education bosses in County Durham say their figures buck the trend and the number of persistent offenders in the region has been halved over the past two years. Figures have been reduced from 1.5 to 0.8.

The national average of half-days lost due to unauthorised absence, as truancy is measured, has stayed static this year at 0.7.

Durham County Council said it has always given priority to the problem and has had several anti-truancy operations in place.

Ian Shanks, operations manage in the Council's Education Department, said: "Truancy sweeps can take place at any time and at any location.

"We use information gathered from shopkeepers and members of the public to target places where children are hanging around during school time, but we also visit places at random.

"By working with headteachers, we are also able to track down 'post registration' truants - pupils who attend school first thing to get their mark in the register and then vanish.''

According to the council's figures, at least 23 cases have been taken to court already this academic year resulting in successful prosecutions.

Mr Twigg said that the fast-track prosecution process would be piloted in six local education authorities, names of which have yet to be released.

This means when a school refers a persistent truancy case to the Local Education Authority welfare education officers, parents will be told they have 12 weeks to ensure that their child turns up at school or face automatic prosecution.