Parents can be jailed for up to three months for each truanting child

Sandra Hayward, 38, was sentenced by Reading Magistrates on Wednesday after council education welfare officers brought the case against her.

She had already failed to make one child attend school, the court heard.

Frank Brown, the leader of Wokingham District Council, said that taking Hayward to court was a last resort.

�2,500 a child

Mr Browne said that over the last six months officers had visited Hayward at home seven times to discuss her son's truancy, written to her five times and had 16 telephone conversations, but without success.

Her son is a pupil at Ryeish Green School in Spencers Wood, Reading, Berkshire.

Earlier this month, Patricia Amos, from Banbury in Oxfordshire, was told she faces jail for letting her 14-year-old daughter skip class almost every other day.

Amos, 45, who was jailed for 60 days in 2002 after failing to stop another child from truanting, will be sentenced for the latest offence on 23 March.

Parents can now be fined up to �2,500 for each child playing truant - or jailed for up to three months