Welsh Education Minister Jane Davidson will order all schools to remind parents of their obligations to ensure that children do not skip lessons.

The move comes as part of her crackdown on truancy, announced to fellow Welsh Assembly members on Wednesday.

Jane Davidson : battling against truancy

Ms Davidson revealed that a Wales-wide "truancy task force" would be set up to combat the growing problem of children missing school.

She said that most parents believed that a two-week holiday could be taken during the school year - but this was "absolutely not the case". It has been estimated that 3,000 children avoid school every day in Wales, and public pressure is growing to tackle the situation.

The task force will be expected to report back to the assembly in September, at the start of the autumn school term.

Jailed mother Patricia Amos

The creation of the special body coincides with news that the first woman in the UK jailed for failing to stop her children playing truant had been freed on appeal.

Patricia Amos from Oxfordshire was given 60 days in prison by magistrates earlier this month, but released on Wednesday.

The court decided that 28 days would have been a more appropriate sentence. She was freed because she had served half the sentence.

Last month, a secondary school in north Wales began testing a system of using mobile phone text messages to clamp down on pupils who played truant.

In a month-long experiement, morning register at Friars School in Bangor is being scanned into a computer and automatic personalised messages sent out to the mobile phones of parents whose children are missing.

The UK government has recently made tackling truancy a high priority.

Prime Minister Tony Blair caused controversy when he suggested that parents of regular truants could lose child benefit payments.

UK Education Secretary Estelle Morris has called for police to be stationed in comprehensive schools in a bid to improve attendance and behaviour in England's worst street crime and truancy "hot spots".