A FARNHAM mother has become the first parent in Surrey to receive a Community Punishment Order for failing to ensure that her child attends school regularly.

Magistrates sitting in Woking last Friday sentenced the woman, 33, to 120 hours of community service, after she had been prosecuted for the third time for such offences.

A fine had previously been the most severe punishment dealt for crimes of this nature in Surrey.

The woman's 12-year-old daughter, who cannot be identified because of an order made by the court, has had a continuing poor attendance record.

Between January and May, 2004, which was the period on which the summons was based, the girl's attendance had been 56 per cent.

A Surrey County Council education spokesman said: "We would normally expect attendance to be around 93 per cent or above. This is across the whole county and we would expect Farnham figures to also be around this mark."

He added: "On average we issue more than 100 summonses per year across the county, involving about 70 parents, with some being prosecuted more than once.

"Around 75 per cent of these result in fines and the rest in conditional discharge, which also counts as a conviction. This means that if they are summonsed again within a year, the court may decide to punish them for the original offence as well."

The mother had been summonsed on two previous occasions under a section of the Education Act 1996, for which the maximum penalty is £1,000. In August 2000, magistrates fined her £200 and in January 2002, her punishment was £400.

However, as her daughter's poor school attendance continued, and the mother failed to co-operate with education welfare officers, Surrey County Council decided to prosecute her again - this time under a relatively new section of the Act that allows for more serious offenders to be fined up to £2,500 and/or sentenced to imprisonment for up to three months for each offence.

The case was scheduled to be heard in July, but the woman failed to attend court and the magistrates issued a warrant for her arrest.

She then appeared in August, when the magistrates said they could not rule out a prison sentence and asked the Probation Service to provide them with a pre-sentence report to help with their decision.

Last Friday they decided to impose the Community Punishment Order, which she must complete within 12 months under the supervision of the Probation Service.

The court presentation officer for education welfare, Bob Searle, of the county council's children's service, said after the hearing: "We are pleased the magistrates have taken a serious view of this case. When requesting a pre-sentence report, they indicated that they were considering a custodial sentence."

"We hope this will serve as a warning to others. We won't hesitate to prosecute parents who fail to do their legal duty to ensure that their children attend school regularly."

Weydon School headteacher Lynne Jackson confirmed that the girl in question was not a Weydon pupil and explained that attendance at her school has improved in recent years. Other Farnham secondary schools, however, were unavailable for comment before The Herald went to press.

Mrs Jackson said: "We have worked very hard with children and with parents and our average attendance has gone up from 91.5 per cent to nearly 94 per cent in the last three years.

"We have achieved this by working in systematic ways with parents and by meeting with the children who have the lowest attendance.

"We also offer rewards for good attendance in some cases. We do need parents' support, though. Sometimes we don't have this and this is when it goes wrong."

"If a parent asks me if a child can go on holiday and I say no, which I always do because we do not authorise holidays in term time, then this is officially regarded as truancy in government statistics - even though the parent knows where their child is."

She explained that truancy, in terms of children missing school without their parents being aware, is not a problem at Weydon School, but unauthorised absences have become a problem.

She added: "In the end the only people who can take action against this are the education welfare department. This can only happen if the unauthorised absences are very, very frequent."