SPECIALIST officers are being drafted in for the first time to track down missing pupils in Accrington and Burnley.

Two pupil tracking officers will visit all secondary schools in the areas from September to July in a bid to find out what has happened to pupils who are not at school.

The officers will work to support Lancashire County Council education welfare teams to find out why some children have never turned up to school or have been missing for weeks.

Five officers are being appointed across Lancashire to deal with more than 1,000 names which do not tally with pupil whereabouts.

More than £125,000 has initially been granted from central government to fund the pilot project. If successful it could be continued for a further five years.

They will look at cases where pupils' parents might have been divorced or their child has moved schools without the necessary notification being supplied to education authorities.

The appointments come in response to an education watchdog inspection of the authority in 2001 which highlighted the problem, which effects schools across the country.

County Coun Clive Grunshaw, cabinet member for children and families, said: "This pilot scheme has been set up to help our education welfare officers track pupils who have not attended a school they are registered at for some time.

"The new officers will liaise with schools and do a lot of the initial enquiries involved in trying to find out where a pupil has gone.

"This is obviously very time consuming work and their appointment should free up our existing education welfare officers' time to enable them to increase their case loads.

"The problem of missing pupils is a national one, and I hope the way we are addressing it will be successful and could be taken up by other LEA's across the country."

The tracking officers will facilitate the up-dating of records of school attendance which could mean that over subscribed schools will have more places available than was at first thought.

It also means that children who are perhaps not attending school at all can be found.

At present, parents who remove a child from a Lancashire County Council school or know they are moving have to notify the head teacher. A teacher who is aware of a missing pupil reports it to their education welfare service officer.

Schools in Blackburn with Darwen will contact their education welfare officer as soon as any child who is enrolled at that school fails to arrive. It is then the EWO who investigates.