YOUR article, 'Truants at work on market stalls' (LET, November 18), suggested that police felt that some schools compromised the anti-truancy exercise by allowing recently captured truants to abscond almost immediately and to proceed to re-engage in criminal activities during the school day.

Hard-hitting, desk-thumping statements are grand for spleen-venting, but they rarely help in the delicate business of inter-agency liaison.

Many teachers, social workers, police officers and educational welfare officers will be disappointed by the tone adopted by the police.

Would the annoyed policeperson please tell us exactly how a school should keep a determined chronic truant within its boundaries?

Handcuffs and locked rooms are not politically correct; physical restraint will have Mummy and Daddy gleefully rushing to the compensation courts; actual bodily harm in the shape of a clout from a frustrated teacher will result in the police coming to school and arresting the teacher.

Truancy is a serious social problem which will need sensitive handling by everyone concerned, not least by the parents of truanting schoolchildren.

Undiplomatic or rushed press statements from harassed police officers serve only to divert attention from the scale of the task.

P McKENNA, Leamington Road, Blackburn.