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With truancy figures soaring, the government is exploring measures to curtail the issue, including scrapping child benefits as a means of punishment.

Writing in a Sunday newspaper, the Prime Minister said it was about time parents should be held more accountable for their children’s actions, citing truancy as an example.

“Is it time that the parents of pupils who continually play truant face even stronger sanctions if they refuse to take responsibility for their children?” David Cameron wrote.

He went on to question the link between responsibility and welfare benefits, condemning Labour’s “something-for-nothing system” that has had “a poisonous effect on responsibility in our society”.

Truancy has been a long standing issue in the UK and has been on an incline. Figures released by the Department for Education earlier this year exposed that approximately 66,000 students bunked school on a typical day in 2009-10 through truancy - a significant upswing when compared to 57,200 in the same period of 2006.

The problem appeared to have inflamed during Labour’s ruling, with a 42% increase on 1996-97, when the truancy rate was 0.73%, and truancy now stands at 44% despite the former government dishing out £1 billion to cut down on students playing hooky.

A series of stringent measures such as fining or jailing parents who let skip school launched in 2001, which saw over 32,500 parents being convicted, with almost 100 jailed for up to three months, didn’t seem to deter the issue; the negative figures continued to soar as many parents ignored the fines, and courts failed to lock them up.

In an attempt to accelerate  fixing a broken society, Mr Cameron has requested former head teacher Charlie Taylor, the Government’s adviser on discipline in schools, to head a review by a team of experts into ways of cutting truancy, including withdrawing child benefit.

Under the proposals, child benefit worth £20.30 a week for the eldest child, and £13.40 for each subsequent child could be scrapped through a computerised system.

Officials have insisted no final ruling has been passed but the idea is bound to attract criticism especially from the Labour party.

A spokesman for the Child Poverty Action Group criticised the proposal saying it left the door open for increased poverty.

“Child poverty is already expected to rise as a consequence of government’s policies. Dropping more children into poverty is not the answer to truancy. Courts already have tough powers to deal with truancy,” he said, adding that it was “simplistic and wrong” to deny parents, who aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities, of child benefits.

“Cutting child benefit will undoubtedly lead to worse health and education outcomes and in the long term do more damage than good.”

 However one Tory MP pointed out that no child would starve as a result of the penalty but it would instead “teach the parents a lesson and give them a real incentive to send their child back to school.”

The MP said that parents who don’t assume responsibility for their kids do not deserve to receive a subsidy from the “very taxpayers who are suffering from the consequences of truancy,” noting that children who “play truant are most likely to be those committing crime and other mischief”.