PARENTS who fail to keep their children in school have been issued with a stark warning: send them in or go to jail. In the next few weeks, every parent in the Medway area with a child in the first year at primary or secondary school will receive a leaflet warning they face prosecution if their child does not go to school.

It is the latest step in an on-going campaign by Medway Council to get truancy figures down. A spokesman for the council said: "The council works very hard to ensure that children are in school when they should be. Together with the police and with the support of parents we want to reduce the level of truancy as much as possible.

"We hope by educating children and their parents through the leaflets and by talking to them we can stress the importance of attending lessons."

The leaflet sets out the legal obligations of a parent to send their child to school, why regularly going to school is essential and the role of the council's education welfare officers.

It also stresses the harmful effects of missing school on a child's employment opportunities

But Doug Macari, Medway spokesman for the National Union of Teachers, believes punishing parents is not the answer.

He said: "These facilities for prosecuting parents have been around for some time but there are still many incidents where parents have been prosecuted and their children still do not go to school. It just causes more problems to the families.

"Very often the children come from poorer families. The parents are out of the house trying to make a living so they are not able to make sure their children go to school."

Instead. Mr Macari called for greater investigation into the reasons behind truancy.