RETURNING children to the classroom was the focus of a crackdown on truancy in Halton.

Police in the borough spent three days stopping and questioning school aged children who were spotted outside of school during normal lesson times, to find out whether or not they had any permission to be out and about.

During the crackdown, code named Operation Blue National, officers from the Runcorn Community Action Team (CAT) teamed up with Education Welfare officers in their aim to stop youngsters skipping school.

The truancy sweep took place last month, following a similar initiative in May.

The November crackdown saw 71 children stopped over three days, 21 of whom did not have a valid reason for being out of school. Further investigation showed that nine of these were playing truant.

Back in May, officers on the lookout for truants stopped a total of 142 children and found that 58 of these had no valid excuse for missing lessons. Forty-five of these were identified as truants.

PC Dave Aspinall, who along with PC Ian Sephton, has recently joined the Runcorn CAT team and was assigned to Operation Blue National, said; 'The operation was a great success and numerous children were spoken to and escorted back to school.

'The response from the public was very good.

'The work done by Halton education welfare officers in conjunction with the police has been pro-active and will hopefully continue for many years to come.'

Sean Curran, education welfare officer at Halton Borough Council, said the figures did not show a massive problem with truancy in the borough, but indicated that many children are missing school with their parents' permission for the most trivial of reasons.

'The public perception is that children who are out of school are truants,' he said.

'However, we only clearly identified nine children who were out of school without permission.

'Many of the children seen out of school had been given consent by a school or parent or guardian.

'Education welfare officers have worked extremely well with the police during this operation to ensure that children are in school.'