The equivalent of 321 pupils a day are skipping school in Oxfordshire with some missing vital lessons to jet away on cheap holidays with their families.

According to the latest figures, 61,144 days were lost last year because of unauthorised absences in Oxfordshire's schools.

The real reason behind the figures, one headteacher claimed, is not kids playing hookey - but cheap package holiday deals.

Figures obtained by the Oxford Mail using the Freedom of Information Act showed unauthorised absences were falling year-on-year, but it remained a huge headache for teachers.

At Peers School in Littlemore, where rates are the highest in the county, the head has refused to give children holiday leave during term time unless their attendance is excellent throughout the rest of the year.

Absence rates at the school have increased year-on-year.

County Hall statistics show that in 2004/05, 606 pupils were absent without authorisation for at least half-a-day - and last year the figure jumped to 739.

In some cases the same pupil missed a number of sessions.

Headteacher Lorna Caldicott said: "We have a problem in this area with parents taking holidays especially when there are cheap deals.

"We have revised our policy such that holiday leave will only be authorised if the child's attendance record is 93 per cent or more - or there are compassionate grounds.

"One of the main problems is when the likes of The Sun newspaper do £9 holiday vouchers - that's a hard one to turn down.

"If a child's attendance is 90 per cent that actually means they have missed 17 days of school and that's the equivalent of grades all dropping by one.

"It's no coincidence, those who get five A-C grades their attendance is 93 per cent or more."

Registers are taken twice a day in Oxfordshire's schools and absence rates are measured by the number of half-day sessions missed.

In 2005/06, 122,289 half-days were lost to truancy - a reduction on the previous year's figure of 141,411, and education bosses say Oxfordshire has lower truancy rates than many other authorities.

The number of pupils absent without authorisation in all schools across Oxfordshire dropped from 14,284 in 2003/04 to 11,724 in 2005/06.

There are 71,000 pupils in total in the county, with 320 a day - 0.45 per cent skipping classes.

Last week we reported on a 54-year-old Oxfordshire father who was jailed for a fortnight for allowing his son to skip school.

He became the third parent to be imprisoned for allowing their children to miss class. Truancy might have dropped in Oxfordshire, but prosecutions have almost doubled from 35 cases in 2004/05 to 61 in 2005/06.

Barry Armstrong, the county's attendance officer for attendance and pupil welfare, said that if the total number of sessions lost due to unauthorised absence was 122,289, this was the equivalent to 61,149 days.

He said: "If there are 190 days in the school calendar, then on any one day this is equivalent to 322 pupils being absent."

He added: "We need to bear in mind that there are 71,000 pupils in Oxfordshire, so over the year this is less than one day of unauthorised absence for each pupil. The county has one of the lowest unauthorised absence rates in the South East."