Wednesday 29 August 2007 10:00pm – 10:30pm on ITV1.

Aby Cunliffe refuses to go to school. Since February, the 13 – year – old has been absent from school for 50 per cent of the time and her mother Shirley could face jail if her daughter’s attendance doesn’t improve.

“I am scared for myself and my kids. I don’t want to go to jail, I haven’t done anything wrong.” Shirley says.

In the last of the ITV1 three part series, Ann Widdecombe Versus the Truants, Ann takes a trip to Liverpool to visit the Cunliffes and witness the truanting teenager first hand.

Aby is in bed until 1.30pm most days, retaliating against her parents’ efforts to get her up and out of the door each day with verbal and physical abuse.

Shirley explains: “She will sit up there all day. If I take her telly off her she blackmails me. She says, ‘If you take my telly off me I won’t go to school.’”

“She doesn’t give a monkeys. She told me to my face two weeks ago, ‘I don’t care if you go to jail or not.’”

“I shouldn’t have to take punches off a 13-year-old,” Shirley tells Ann.

Ann couldn’t agree more and wants to help the family but no amount of one-to-one coaching or behavioural therapy seems to be working.

Despite promises from Aby herself, Ann witnesses Aby go to school once during her time with the Cunliffes and only when Shirley has to physically drag her out of the door and put her in the car shouting and screaming.

With over 200,000 children classed as missing lessons, the problem of truancy is not on the decline. Ann visits one school in Coventry which offers students cash voucher incentives for amongst other things, good behaviour and regular attendance.

Ashgreen School has improved its attendance by seven per cent since the system’s introduction claiming that by rewarding students with something they value, they are likely to work to achieve it.

The programme also asks whether special truancy units or residential schooling – already in existence for excluded pupils – could be a way to get persistent truants back into school.