Government for the last couple of years has not been able to accurately keep track of the number of students who have skipped school. Chief Education Officer Joseph Christopher revealed to The Royal Gazette that this was partially because of problems with the computer link up between public schools and the main computer set-up to collect such data.

But Dr. Christopher, who was speaking during the first week of classes for public schools, also admitted that schools had become `very lax' in recording reasons for absenteeism.

"In order to determine truancy, a person must have an unexplained absence,'' he explained. "Therefore we had created categories of absences for schools to use. Schools have become very lax in that and therefore they tend to record all absences under the unexplained category.'' But even if the Education Department had `reliable' statistics on hooky players, there is no truancy officer to look for them.

Dr. Christopher said that the days of having a person track down students who skipped school were virtually over.

"Having one person to go around chasing a bunch of children, I don't think is an effective way of dealing with this issue,'' Dr. Christopher said, adding that he was not aware of any parent that had been taken to court for a truant child since the late eighties.

However he admitted that the Education Department was "very concerned about non-attendance''.

And he said issues of truancy and suspension because of misbehaviour will be raised in a meeting with principals on September 19.

"There was a time when there was an attendance officer. And many persons when they talk about it refer to persons such as Mr. Stuart Trott who existed in the fifties and sixties,'' Dr. Christopher recalled. "This was a person who would go out and chase children to get them back to school.

"The environment that existed at that time was one in which most persons were amiable to that. We have a situation now where the young persons are challenging authority in all forms.'' Therefore, since the 1970s when there was still a truancy officer, he said, counsellors were put in place to work with parents on the issue.

"In addition, we now have educational therapists who are both teaching persons and persons who deal with behavioural issues associated with children,'' Dr. Christopher noted. "They will also work with parents. But it is more of a counselling type of approach, rather than a punitive approach of running after people.'' Senior education officers also now have the responsibility of an attendance officer to deal with the legal issues associated with truancy.

But Dr. Christopher said: "The attendance officer really does not have the power to take a child back to school. And even if he could, persons must be aware that in the Police situation when you have someone resisting, they don't have one person dealing with it. They get other officers.'' Skipping school "So if you have a child who is a teenager refusing to go back to school, the effectiveness of one attendance officer or two or three attendance officers -- who are not likely to go around in packs -- is little or none.

"We need to look at other ways of getting children to be at school.'' This and the issue of recording absenteeism are expected to be discussed at Thursday's meeting.

"A parent must not always be aware when a child is absent,'' he added, "so it is our responsibility to inform the parent when a child is not attending school.'' However, both Dr. Christopher and Education Minister Jerome Dill noted that "ultimately'' it was parents' responsibility to ensure that their children attended school.

"We would spread that load over as large a load of senior education officers as possible,'' Mr. Dill said. "But let's be realistic about this. If a young person wants to take the day off and do things which he or she is not supposed to, we cannot always go after that person.

"The answer is for more vigilance by parents. Like so many other things, it must start with the parent.'' Mr. Dill said it was also time for the community to be "far more proactive''.

"There's nothing wrong with calling the principal and saying there's a particular child down here, send someone to come and get them.

"Even if we had a truancy officer, he or she can spend an entire day trying to track down one child. The answer is not just throwing Government funds at the problem. That is just window dressing.

"What we need is as many senior education officers as we can acting as attendance officers, as many parents as we can being vigilante, and we also need members of the public getting involved.'' However, Opposition Leader and Shadow Education Minister Jennifer Smith questioned the Education Ministry's sincerity about the importance of education.

"If we really believe that education is so important that it is compulsory for young people to attend school, then we must follow that up with action,'' Ms Smith said.

"We are throwing away our young people when we don't follow up on their absenteeism.

"It is important for us to have statistics on truancy. If we don't have statistics telling us why they are absent, then we cannot address the problem.'' Stressing that her comments were directed at the Ministry and not at Dr.

Christopher, she said: "Young people study our actions, not our words. We have not shown by our actions that we care about them, if we do not have a truancy officer.

"If a young person has been missing from school for days and someone makes the effort to seek them out, isn't that a start for showing the young person that someone cares about them? "Everyone involved in education recognises that there are not enough counsellors for the problem.'' Ms Smith also pointed out that with the eligible school-leaving age at 15, a truancy officer could at least be appointed to deal with primary school children in the hope of stemming the problem before they reached high school.

"The policy as enunciated in the 1996 Education Act eliminated the need for a truancy officer, when they need a minimum of three,'' she said.

"If we consider education really important, we should not be allowing truancy. Principals are overburdened with responsibility, which means they cannot give full attention to this problem. It needs someone who can, even if it is one person, make sure that the Ministry has accurate statistics on the problem so that it can be properly addressed.'' Head of the Association of School Principals Livingston Tuzo agreed that the truancy problem had to be "ironed out''.

But he said principals could not decide on a method of handling the problem until it met with the Ministry.