In a system wherein the government has assumed primary responsibility for educating its citizens-to-be and wherein the government is actively engaged in providing a safety net in the form of welfare, unemployment insurance and socialized medicine (this includes most of Europe, the Americas, etc.), it is very much in the government's interest to prevent truancy and to make sure everyone is exposed to the education it deems appropriate and to minimize the number it must cover with the "dole."

I would prefer a system wherein none of these services is provided by the central government. In that scenario, truancy would be moot at best.