Officers will address students they come across in the streets during school hours.

The police have been roped in by the education authorities to try to curb truancy in schools, Times of Malta has learnt.

Police Commissioner Michael Cassar was approached by the Education Ministry earlier this year to provide police assistance when handling “difficult parents”, government sources said.

A memo sent out to police districts, via assistant commissioners, instructed officers to accompany social workers during home visits “to discourage aggressive behaviour often encountered in troubled households”.

The memo, which followed an agreement reached between the Social Work Service, Education Psycho-Social Services, Student Services Department and the Police Force, forms part of the Education Directorates’ strategy to improve school attendance.

Police officers have also been instructed to contact uncooperative parents asking them to go over to the police station to discuss and collaborate with the school administration and social workers.

The issue of school truancy was highlighted by this newspaper back in 2014 in a report which showed more than one per cent of primary school children were missing more than 40 days of school every year.

The Times of Malta had also revealed that 88 per cent of fines dished out to parents of truants had been ignored – leaving more than €1.4 million unpaid since 2000.

We want them in school where they belong and not to push them further away from the system

The new police agreement will also see beat officers address students they come across in the streets during school hours.

The sources said a template had been formulated and handed out to district stations. Personal details of the students were to be inserted by the police officer and forwarded to the principal social worker who would in turn inform the student’s school.

Last year Education Minister Evarist Bartolo had announced that parents of truant children would be cut off from a new €400 benefit if they were not compliant.

The benefit will mean families with a maximum net annual income of €11,000 receive €400 for each of the first three children and a further €200 per additional child. Some 23,000 children in 13,000 families have benefited from the scheme.

Linking the benefit to attendance appears to be working: a record reduction in truancy of 15 per cent has been registered this scholastic year.

A government spokesman said other initiatives, such as the recruitment of education psycho-social workers, was having an impact as this led to earlier intervention.

Schools were now using a uniform attendance marker system to facilitate monitoring by the authorities. The spokesman added that these initiatives had worked in tandem with an information campaign targeting parents of truants.

The solution, he said, was not merely the issuing of fines or taking legal action, as the issue of truancy was a complex social one.

“We could take strong action, open legal proceedings, issue fines and so on, but our priority here is the best interest of students. We want them in school where they belong and not to push them further away from the system,” the spokesman said.