The number of students who missed school without permission dropped by around a third in 2015 after a reform in attendance enforcement, official figures show.

Attendance data compiled by the National Statistics Office shows the number of days both boys and girls remained away from school without permission fell by about 30 per cent.

Boys missed about 97,000 school days for no good reason between year 1 and form 5, and the figure dropped to 93,000 days for girls who did not produce a doctor’s certificate to justify their absence. In 2015, the education authorities clamped down on parents who did not send their children to school, tying certain social benefits to attendance.

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo and Social Solidarity Minister Michael Farrugia both said that the improved figures were the result of targeted government efforts to curb truancy.

Mr Bartolo admitted in Parliament in 2015 that though a scheme offering a grant to low-income parents whose children did not miss school had drastically cut truancy, it had also contributed to the spread of illnesses.

He said the scheme had cut absenteeism in all areas, even where truancy was high. According to the NSO data, authorised absences, backed up by a doctor’s certificate, grew by 7.5 per cent.

The data shows that across the board, although boys were about three per cent more likely to miss school than girls, this was not the case in the final year of school.

Sixteen-year-old girls preparing for their O-level exams missed 21,267 school days without a medical certificate in 2015, four per cent more than boys.