Excuses typically used by children for their absence from school include "nausea", "migraine attack" and "visiting dentist" — all of which are reasonable, until they come three times every week, according to a report on Friday in the news daily Heute.  

While such excuses were accepted in the past, these days school authorities are less forgiving, and have begin imposing fines of up to €440 on parents who fail to keep their children in school.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 800 parents were fined — with 344 living in Vienna — for their childrens' persistent truancy — and from that number, 30 Austrians have been imprisoned for failure to pay the fines.

Most of those jailed were in Lower Austria, with 23 convictions, followed by Carinthia with three, and Tyrol and Styria with two each. No cases were recorded in Burgenland or Vorarlberg.