Truancy sweeps and jailing truants' parents have been tried in the UK

But is it as serious in other countries, and could the UK learn from their strategies?

Truancy is a growing problem in the US, says Dr Ken Seeley, president of the National Center for School Engagement.

In public schools, the absentee rate was highest in urban schools and lowest in rural schools. Absentee rates generally increased with rates of student poverty.

Some metropolitan areas report thousands of unexcused absences each day.

A recent study by Harvard University found that only 68% of students in the US are completing high school.

A lot of these students are truants, and some drop out of school completely.

The problem often begins when the students are very young.

Many come from turbulent homes, with problems like domestic violence or drug abuse. And some parents don't feel school is important.

But by the time these students reach high school in the US, they feel little connection to school and struggle with performance.

The US has developed several model programmes to combat truancy with different strategies targeting different age students.

In Jacksonville Florida, schools use home visits to stress the importance of school with the parents of chronically truant students.

If the students continue to truant, their parents can be arrested for failing to ensure their children attend school. "That has helped get parents' attention," Dr Seeley said.

And chronically truant students can be denied driving privileges in Florida and Rhode Island, proving an effective deterrent to absenteeism.

A programme in Seattle schools has used the combined weight of police, courts and the schools to reduce truancy.

The police are alerted immediately when students are absent, helping return them to the classroom more quickly.

And the courts see truant students the next week instead of months later, helping to speed intervention.

Some strategies have not worked, Dr Seeley said. Automatically giving students failing marks for missing classes has only exacerbated the problems of low achievers.

"And locking up kids is not the answer," he added.

So how do you prevent teenagers from "ditching"?

Dr Seeley says that truancy often begins after students' transition from middle school to high school in the US, at 13 or 14 years old.

He urges schools to devote more resources to summer programmes before students begin high school and to target students most at risk of chronic truancy - those from low income families and low achievers.

France has long been concerned by the levels of truancy in schools, with full-time education compulsory for the under-16s.

French government figures show that between one and two per cent of pupils under the age of 16 regularly play truant - between 100,000 and 150,000 children in total.

An official report in 2003 highlighted links between truancy and delinquency, with the government promising to act to force parents to ensure their child attended school on a regular basis.

As a result, in January 2004, the centre-right French government brought in a new law, fining parents 750 euros (around �500) if their children persistently truanted.

However, no figures are yet available to show how many parents have been fined.

An older law already enabled French authorities to withdraw benefit from families who did not do all they could to make their child go to school - with up to 2,900 households seeing some of their child benefit withdrawn as a result in the school year 2001-2.

A survey by the French ministry of education in September 2004 suggested that the problem was worse at secondary level, especially at technical colleges where up to 10% of pupils failed to turn up to class for at least four half-days a month.

Officially, truancy is not a problem in Russia. There is no government scheme to address the issue - it has not crept up the agenda yet.

In Soviet times the school system was extremely strict. Education was compulsory and parents and teachers faced punishment if a child failed to graduate.

So it was in everyone's interests to ensure pupils turned-up for class. It helped that teachers were widely respected, and often feared.

But today, schools are as divided as Russian society.

In most good state or private schools, teachers will demand an official note to explain any absence. They will call parents if a child fails to show-up.

But even in prestigious central Moscow, parents say teachers often wash their hands of truants.

One woman discovered her daughter had missed an entire term. Her teacher's response? Not my problem.

Other parents, who remember the discipline of old, say a child these days has to be a serial offender before schools take serious action.

The quality and quantity of teachers is also having an effect. Low wages mean an acute shortage of staff in many schools, making dealing with truants a low priority.