Wow. That's madness.
My school is theoretically strict but unbelievably lax in practice. I have never truanted myself, but I have been considerably late countless times/not bothered to hand in notes/not bothered to get my mum to call in when sick (I'm not proud of it, I wish I had a better record)... and nothing ever happened.
You are meant to have doctor's certificates etc if you are absent from a carnival... in practice they never follow it up.
For unexplained absences you get a list which your parent must explain/sign off on... which I have forgotten to hand in once or twice, with no consequences (and I had over a week's worth of unexplained absences).
Absences during the day are not noticed. Once I left for a doctor's appointment without a note etc, midway through the day, and returned before last period. nothing happened.
and so on. ad nauseam. I know of people who skip school, I know of one who got punished (with no more than a telling-off and a threat)... But I guess as it is a private school, as far as they are concerned it's the parents' problem if their daughter is not bothering to turn up (and the truancy rate is probably much lower than average too). I quite like this philosophy. There aren't any fences or anything like that. In fact, pedestrians used to cut through and use it as a shortcut.