On TV

A STAGGERING £650m has been put into the campaign to get children back into school. And when you're spending that amount of money tackling truancy, you want everyone to know, so you get a BBC camera crew to spend a year on the streets with education officers and police in North-West England to show how it's being spent.

Truants' methods of bunking off school range from having a tantrum and refusing to get out of bed, to claiming they have a day off for teachers' training and going shoplifting instead.

Parents, we were told, are in the front line in the Government's war against truancy. If children don't go to school, then mum or dad is locked up. Trying to find out the root causes of the truancy would seem a better idea but imprisoning parents sends out a clear message that "we mean business".

Patricia Amos complained that she's being used as a weapon against other people. She's the person being made an example of to shock other parents to take action.

Telling a child he or she must go to school is one thing. Actually getting them there is another. Karen Brooks is a full-time mum to eight children, aged three to 19. Dad Steve is an unemployed labourer. Getting ten-year-old Ashley out of bed and off to school is a full-time occupation in itself. She's one of 50,000 children truanting from school every day. Karen has no idea why her daughter refuses to go to school as she's not being bullied or bad at lessons. She and Steve have to virtually drag Ashley to the school gates, kicking and screaming. Even then, she runs away from class as soon as her parents have gone home.

The Brooks were told they were close to being taken to court if Ashley's attendance record didn't improve quickly. Legislation means that parents can be fast tracked to prosecution. Patricia Amos knows this only too well - in 2002 she was the first parent to be jailed under the new laws. She was sent to prison for 60 days and, the figures showed, truancy rates fell in the months following.

She said it "brought her back to reality" but here she was two years later being taken to court again for the same offence. She was sent to prison for 28 days, although it was difficult to see how jailing her was ever going to make her children go to school.

This single mother of five admitted that, struggling with a heroin addiction, she had left the raising of her daughters to her mother. "They were more like sisters to me than my own children," she said.

As one 15-year-old girl said when told that if her attendance didn't improve, her parents would be prosecuted: "I'm not bothered".

No doubt the parents who gave permission for filming hoped the presence of cameras would help persuade their truanting offspring to go to school. Whether it's TV's job to act as social worker is another question altogether.

Tamar's Revenge, Royal Shakespeare Company,

People's Theatre, Newcastle

A SHOCKING and bloody tragedy features as the third play in the RSC's Golden Age season. Based on an Old Testament tale, it is the story of King David's daughter, Tamar, who exacts revenge on her brother Amnon after he rapes her. It is a brutal and premeditated attack - and there is little on the stage to detract from its stark ugliness.

Afterwards the beautiful, confident princess is transformed and Katherine Kelly gives a powerful performance as the broken, tormented woman. But while she is physically and emotionally wrecked by the attack, she still has a steely determination to see her brother brought to justice. All of King David's sons are touched by the horror of the rape. Symbolically, they all are made to wear Tamar's shame when she smears each of their faces with the ashes in her hair, pleading them to revenge her dishonour.

Matt Ryan gives a highly charged performance as the sexually frustrated Amnon who, despite his appearance of madness, engenders little sympathy due to his lack or morals, self control or regret.

It is an excellent translation from the Spanish by James Fenton, and elements of the script, plus the antics and songs of the peasants, bring some much needed humour. But the ending is sudden and disturbing as the King falls to the floor and howls with anguish at the bloody outcome.

A powerful, gripping and highly emotional tale.

* Runs until Thursday. Box Office: 0870 905 5060

Michelle Hedger