Bilston will become the first truant-free zone in the Midlands with a complete ban on schoolchildren walking the streets during classroom hours.

Police will patrol the town centre looking for youngsters aged between five and 16 to escort back to school.

Shopkeepers and market traders are able to report any cases of loitering pupils via hand held radios amid concerns about anti-social behaviour and crime. Warning notices will be put up in the streets and 10 CCTV cameras will be scanned for school slackers.  

Once a child is caught, officers will inform education welfare workers who will pass the information on to parents. 

Read the full story in the Express & Star. 

Bilston will become the first truant-free zone in the Midlands with a complete ban on schoolchildren walking the streets during classroom hours.

Police will patrol the town centre looking for youngsters aged between five and 16 to escort back to school.

Shopkeepers and market traders are able to report any cases of loitering pupils via hand held radios amid concerns about anti-social behaviour and crime. Warning notices will be put up in the streets and 10 CCTV cameras will be scanned for school slackers.  

Once a child is caught, officers will inform education welfare workers who will pass the information on to parents.

The truancy crackdown will start tomorrow and could be a model for other areas in the region facing similar problems.

Supt Sally Bourner, operations manager for police in the east of Wolverhampton, said today: “Children from this town are no more likely to play truant than those form other areas in the Black Country.

“However, Bilston has excellent transport and shopping facilities and this has attracted a small number of truants who travel from neighbouring towns, some of whom go on to behave in an anti-social manner or even commit crime when they are here.”

In 2005 a study revealed more than half of the secondary school pupils in the Black Country have bunked off school for at least half a day. 

The worst areas were West Bromwich and Stourbridge, but Wolverhampton had also seen an increase in truancy levels.

This led to the parents of persistent truants prosecuted in court and hit with fines and, in some cases, even jailed.

Wolverhampton mayor Councillor John Davies, a retired teacher, welcomed the move to catch more pupils in the act.

“If people are to reach their full potential they must receive a sound education,” he said. 

“The truancy zone will help to do this by keeping children safe and in school.”