"The Social Exclusion Unit's report on truancy and exlusions," Mr Byers said, "produced alarming figures which show that each year at least one million children play truant and around 13,000 pupils are permanently excluded from school".

"We are committed to reducing these figures by a third by 2002 and the Department for Education and Employment is already targeting £22m at the problem this year," he said.

The task force will bring together representatives from across government departments, recognising that the problem of truancy has many origins. The ministerial members of the task force will include Public Health Minister Tessa Jowell, Home Office Minister Alun Michael, Schools Minister Estelle Morris, Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson and Local Government and Housing Minister Hilary Armstrong.

The politicians will be advised by a group of practitioners with experience in working with children who play truant or have become part of the rising numbers of suspensions and expulsions from school.

Already the government's Social Exclusion Unit has proposed guidelines which discourage schools from excluding pupils, such as introducing "cooling off" periods in which alternatives to exclusion can be considered. As an added disincentive to exclude pupils, it suggested that schools which have high rates of exclusion should have extra Ofsted inspections to find out why.