Truancy-busting measures including telephoning the parents of absent pupils have helped an Oxford school win a national prize, writes Madeleine Pennell.

Schools minister Jacqui Smith was today congratulating St Augustine of Canterbury Upper School at Iffley Turn, at a ceremony in London.

It is one of 50 schools to win Truancy Buster Awards from the Department For Education for being the best to improve truancy rates over the past three years. Each school will receive £8,000, with the top three getting a £10,000 prize.

St Augustine's, the joint Anglican and Catholic school, has cut its truancy levels from 6.3 days per pupil in 1997 to 1998, to 0.7 days last year.

The Children's Society ran a project with the school, and a special worker was taken on to call the parents of absent students to check why they were not at school and to make home visits.

A telephone hotline was also installed for the parents of absent children to call.

Children who achieved 100 per cent attendance, or who radically improved their attendance, were given book tokens and certificates.

Headteacher Elisabeth Gilpin said: "We put our success down to our Christian ethos and to various practical strategies such as having a "rapid response" worker who does home visits to students who are not at school, phone calls home, a reintegration programme to support students coming back to school after a period of time off and a varied curriculum in Year 10 and 11. We aim to help each student realise the value of education."