ALMOST 400 pupils in Kirklees were persistently absent from school during the autumn term last year.

New government figures show the numbers of primary and secondary school children who risked damaging their education because of absenteeism, which was often unauthorised.

Latest tables from the Department for Children, Schools and Families showed 342 secondary school age students missed more than 63 classes and 55 of the youngest primary age children persistently missed school.

Overall in Kirklees, pupils missed 57,862 sessions due to unauthorised absence and 411,618 sessions were missed due to authorised absence.

National figures showed more than 40,000 pupils missed nearly half their education during the autumn term.

Children skipped the equivalent of nearly 4.2m school days, with almost 60,000 primary and secondary school pupils absent without permission every day.

Children’s minister Kevin Brennan stressed that fewer secondary school pupils missed classes than in 2006.

“The reduction of overall absence and persistent absenteeism in secondary schools shows that our policies are working,” he said.

“The emerging evidence shows the rise in absence in primary schools last autumn was largely due to illness.

The figures also showed: primary and secondary pupils missed 4.17m school days without their teachers’ permission;

The proportion of all school sessions that were missed through “unauthorised absence”, which includes truancy, rose to 0.94%, up from 0.90% in autumn 2006.

An estimated 59,000 pupils were skipping class without permission on any typical day.

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “There are no magic solutions to tackling core truancy.

“Schools do their best to deal with persistent truancy but they cannot, on their own, address deep-rooted social problems which lead to truancy school refusers”, she said.

The figures showed that overall absence - including sickness – rose sharply in primary schools, with children missing 5.36% of school sessions during the autumn term 2007. (5.50 in Kirklees)

There was a slight fall of 0.01 percentage points to 7.27% in overall absence in secondary schools. (6.21 in Kirklees).