63,000 pupils skipping class every day as truancy reaches record levels

Youngsters are missing 12.6million school days a year - an increase of around three million since Labour came to power in 1997.

Children's Minister Kevin Brennan tried on Tuesday to shift the blame on to parents and heads for turning a blind eye to term-time holidays.

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But the Tories accused the Government of failing to get a grip on the problem and pointed to its record of missed truancy targets.

Labour has twice scaled back a key 1998 goal to slash truancy by a third and has recently dropped national targets for cutting absenteeism.

Tory education spokesman Michael Gove said: "Yet again the latest figures have prompted more excuses and complacency.

"They are blaming the rise in unauthorised absence on parents taking children on holiday when they know this only accounts for a tiny fraction of absences.

"Instead of expending energy making excuses and shifting the blame, the Government should be giving teachers the power to impose effective discipline."

Almost 273,000 primary and secondary pupils in England missed at least one day of school every week through truancy, illness and term-time holidays in 2006-7.

Statistics also show unauthorised absences - used to gauge truancy - have rocketed by a third since 1997 and are now at their highest ever recorded levels.

The number of missed school days has risen from around 9.3million to 12.6million each year. This means about 63,000 pupils dodge lessons on a typical school day.

For the first time, the figures provided details of the reasons pupils missed school.

Illness was by far the biggest cause with 55 per cent of all absence down to sickness.

Family holidays during term-time with the permission of the school accounted for the second most common cause, at 10 per cent of absences, with unauthorised holidays making up a further 1 per cent of the total.

All these holidays equate to around 6.8million school days lost. Mr Brennan argued that the rise in unauthorised absence was down to schools getting tough on pupils who offer weak excuses for missing class.

"Unauthorised absence does not equal truancy. It includes lateness, term-time holidays and flimsy excuses and so does not reliably represent 'problem absence'," he added.

The Liberal Democrats' children's spokesman David Laws said: "Despite ministers throwing vast sums of money at the problem, millions more school days are lost because of children bunking off school."

The National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee reported in 2005 that around £885million has been spent by the Government on initiatives to combat truancy.

However that figure is now thought to exceed £1billion - much of it spent on electronic registration systems and technology to send text alerts to the parents of absent pupils.

•Figures released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families show that only 73.9 per cent of 19-year-olds were qualified to "level two" - the equivalent of five GCSEs at grades A* to C - in 2007.