A school has brought in security guards to try to stop pupils from playing truant.

Glaisdale Comprehensive School in Nottingham has hired the guards, from a firm which also supplies bouncers to nightclubs, to check children trying to leave the premises.

It has also installed spike security fences tipped with paint which marks pupils' uniforms if they try to climb in or out.

The measures were introduced after the school revealed that an average of 3% of its pupils were skipping lessons every day - three times the average national truancy rate.

Acting head teacher Tony Ford decided to implement them after inspectors from the Office for Standards in Education judged the school to be "failing".

'Lunchtime is the key'

He is determined that by the time the inspectors return in six months, things will have changed.

Introducing security guards seemed the sensible way to cut truancy, he said.

"Lunchtime is a key time for reducing truancy - if we use people with security skills to do what is basically a security job."

A spokesman for the Department for Education said it supported the scheme if it brought positive results.

He said he believed it was the first time such steps had been taken by a school.

The security guards, from a local company called Action One Security, monitor pupils' exits from school grounds, questioning them on why they want to leave.