SCHOOL truants will be swept off the streets in a national campaign that was pioneered in Blackburn.

Home Secretary Jack Straw has announced the scheme, based on a successful project run in Blackburn town centre last July, will give police and local authorities new powers to go out and pick up children who should be at school and take their parents to court.

Blackburn MP Mr Straw said he was so impressed by what he heard about the operation from Blackburn with Darwen Council education spokesman Bill Taylor that he immediately passed a report on to Education Secretary David Blunkett.

And the two ministers decided this was the ideal way to tackle a major problem.

Councillor Bill Taylor said the new initiative had taken many "examples of good practice" from the Blackburn town centre scheme.

He said: "This is yet another example where we have accepted there are new ways of working and some of the old solutions to problems were not effective.

"Because what we did in July was so successful we briefed Jack Straw about it. The best thing you can do is copy something if it's working."

Sgt Graham Eccles of Blackburn police's partnership for community safety said the pilot scheme had involved three teams of uniformed police working with education welfare officers.

Over two days they stopped 166 children, 105 of those with their parents, and found 29 truanting.

He said: "We can actually say during those two days comparative crime fell by 37 per cent, which is a big fall."

And yesterday Jack Straw and David Blunkett revealed a nationwide plan to give police and welfare officers new powers to go into town centres and other places where truants congregated, collect them and return them to school.

Some £43million is being allocated nationwide next year to support the moves which will also involve providing new learning mentors in schools with high truancy rates to try and persuade children that it is more constructive and more fun to stay in the classroom. For the first time this will give the police powers of arrest to compel parents to attend court.

Mr Straw told the Evening Telegraph: "I was very impressed with the Blackburn scheme and fed it in to David Blunkett.

"I am very pleased that what was done in Blackburn has been so successful and now we are going to take it nationwide.

"Some 40 per cent of street robberies are conducted by 10-16-year-old children who ought to be in school.

"We are all too well aware of the problems caused by truancy, both to the truants themselves and the local communities through their often disruptive behaviour."

The proposal has been welcomed across East Lancashire and the political spectrum by local MPs.

Former education welfare officer turned Hyndburn MP Greg Pope said : "This is good news. I wish this had been in place when I did the job.

"I am in favour of the police being involved because I don't think education welfare officers can just go up to children in the street, partly as they are always telling them not to talk to strangers."

Burnley MP Peter Pike said: "I am all in favour of this. We need to get children into school. Those on the streets frequently get into trouble and our children only have one chance of getting an education."

Headteachers who manage to cut truancy rates dramatically could be in line for a £10,000 grant for their schools as part of the new drive.