FIGURES show at least 300 students played truant from secondary school in Greenwich every day on average during this year's spring term.

The data, published on September 11 by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, also shows Greenwich had the highest primary school truancy in London and the second highest in the country.

Of 1,799,310 primary school half-day sessions during the term, 27,424 were missed due to unauthorised absence.

This means 1.52 per cent of sessions were missed due to truancy, compared with a national average of 0.57 per cent.

For a 14-week term, this means on average at least 196 pupils were absent each day from primary schools in the borough.

The data was based on pupil level absence data collected through the summer 2007 school census.

Greenwich's primary school truancy is higher than previous data from the autumn term of last year, where 28,772 sessions were missed from a total of 2,214,970, a rate of 1.3 per cent.

The borough also had the second-highest number of secondary school days missed in London due to truancy.

Pupils missed 42,538 morning or afternoon sessions out of a total of 1,280,731 during the spring term due to unauthorised absence.

For a 14-week term this works out as 1,519 school days missed per week, and an average of at least 304 pupils were absent from Greenwich seconday schools per day.

The figures show 3.32 per cent of secondary school sessions were missed - well above the London average of 1.83 per cent.

This is an increase on the 47,597 unauthorised absences from 1,584,362 sessions last autumn - a rate of three per cent.

A Greenwich Council spokesman said: "School attendance figures are rising across the borough.

"We have exceeded the targets for primary schools, and seen a significant reduction in persistent absences in secondary schools.

"Increasing attendance is a priority for us and we have a range of measures in place to achieve this, including working closely with schools to develop good practice.

"We are also focusing work on early intervention to address the underlining causes of truancy in our schools."

Government children's minister Kevin Brennan said: "A small hardcore of just over two per cent of pupils account for more than half of all unauthorised absence.

"Persistent truants are four times more likely to be unemployed than those who attend school regularly, so this is an urgent issue."

Project director for alternative education provider Streetvibes Youth, Sonia Ramanah, said: "Truancy can be caused by not having English as a first language, levels of deprivation or not having levels of academic support at home.

"For some people the structured environment of a school doesn't work."