Year after year we comment on the parlous state of school examination results in Bradford. Every year we seize on the smallest improvement, the slightest inching upward, of Bradford's position in the league tables in the hope that it heralds real change for the better and we will be able to report a faster trend next time around.

Sadly this hoped-for giant leap in performance of the district's schools still seems a long way off. There are many reasons cited for this failure to move up the tables more rapidly. One of the most important must be the dreadful record of unauthorised school absenteeism.

The latest government statistics show that Bradford West parliamentary constituency is the third worst in the country in this context, with Bradford North fourth worst and Bradford South sixth.

Surely school results will never improve if these rates remain unchecked and the authorities fail to get children into school and keep them there. Education chiefs have described truancy rates as unacceptable. We would suggest that is understating the case.

Parents must accept a great deal of the responsibility for this failure. It is telling that more than a third of the parents who have had a fixed-rate penalty imposed on them for failing to send their children to school are having to be prosecuted for not paying it, suggesting that they are not taking the matter seriously.

The authorities must get to the root of the problem, and urgently, before the rates escalate out of control and Bradford's marginal improvements in educational performance are wiped out altogether.