Bradford has the second worst truancy record in the country - so it is hardly surprising that the district shows up so badly in the schools performance league tables. Nor does it require too great a stretch of the imagination to relate that high level of truancy to the growth of juvenile crime and Bradford's alarming drugs problem among young people.

Anything which will head off truancy at source - the point at which children decide that they prefer not to go to school - has to be worth a try. The new initiative from the Council's Education Social Work Service to combat absenteeism seems to be a sensible way of tackling this problem.

Social workers will encourage parents to talk to their children now the time has come for them to return to school. They will offer them advice and guidance on how to discover any anxieties the children might have, over matters such as bullying, extra homework, coping with a strange new environment - all those things which too many children keep bottled up inside themselves and which can lead to them staying away from school.

It is a common-sense approach and, hopefully, some pupils will benefit from it. But it points the way to the real solution to the problem, which is the duty of parents to take a full interest in their children.

Until all parents decide to face up to their responsibilities and recognise that it is up to them, both legally and morally, to make sure that their offspring attend school, then the situation is unlikely to show any dramatic improvement.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.