TRUANCY is a vast social problem in itself - when, according to Education Secretary David Blunkett, 50,000 are missing lessons every day. But tied to this ruin of so many youngsters' education are frightening levels of crime.

This was shown by a two-day crackdown on truants in Blackburn last summer - in a pioneering scheme that Home Secretary Jack Straw and Mr Blunkett are now spreading nationwide - when, in that time, crime fell by 37 per cent. And Mr Straw says that some 40 per cent of street robberies are carried out by 10 to 16-year-olds who should be in school.

Truancy, then, is a double menace - harmful to the children and a criminal bane in the community.

There will, therefore, be a tremendous welcome for the announcement, that following the success of the Blackburn project, the police and local authorities everywhere are being given new powers to pick up children who should be at school and take their parents to court.

The maximum fines are being tremendously increased and present-day penalties of around £20 are expected to shoot up tenfold. And there is a real need to deter parental consent for truanting - since, as the Blackburn campaign showed and as Mr Blunkett also states, most truants are with their parents when they should be in class.

It is hard to understand why so much adult irresponsibility lies behind this problem - when parents are allowing their children to receive a poor education and, at the same time, contributing to a vast social problem that is responsible for so many going off the rails and thousands more suffering the effects in crime and nuisance.

Such parents really do deserve to be hammered by the law - and if the success of Blackburn's crackdown means that they will be to such an extent that the curse of truancy is truly curbed, then its devisers deserve full marks.