The snapshot survey carried out in the last school year at 31 secondary schools in England found an increase in unauthorised absences.

It also says increases in unauthorised absences could be caused by a change in how absenteeism figures are recorded.

Tackling absenteeism has been a longstanding problem for the government - with figures released earlier this month showing that there only been limited progress.

The Ofsted report examined ways of reducing unauthorised absences and found that legal threats and telephoning students' homes had been effective.

It says that automated phone calls, which "relentlessly" send messages to parents, have also been a successful tactic.

But it says that for the most persistent truants any of these measures were not particularly successful in changing behaviour.

Secondary schools with high quality teaching and learning were found to have the best levels of attendance.

Strong leadership and management also had a positive effect on attendance along with a curriculum that met the needs of pupils.

But the report noted that the rise in truancy levels could be partly explained by the different ways in which schools authorise absence.

Some schools would mark a pupil who arrived late as absent if they did not accept the reason given, while other schools would just mark them as late.

Practice for recording absence in schools was inconsistent because some schools accepted explanations from pupils and parents which would have been challenged in others.

Some of the reasons given by children for unauthorised absence included finding lessons boring, difficulties getting on with particular teachers and difficulties catching up with work.

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