A government crackdown on persistent truants has persuaded thousands of previously absent pupils to turn up to school, according to new figures.
Officials said the drive - in which parents were threatened with heavy fines or jail if they failed to get their children to school - had cut persistent truancy by 27%.
This meant about 3,500 of the 13,000 regular truants in the schools targeted by the scheme had returned to class, the Department for Education and Skills said.
The DfES analysis of the scheme came as the Government prepared to publish the latest annual truancy rates for England in a separate set of figures.
Ministers launched the crackdown in September last year, at first targeting 8,000 hardcore truants who skipped more than 20 days of school during a year.
The initiative came in response to record truancy rates, with a 10% rise in the number of pupils missing class without permission.
The Government estimated at the time that about 55,000 pupils were truant in England on a typical day.
During the past year the scheme was expanded from the original 8,000 problem pupils to target 10,000 and then about 13,000 pupils in 200 schools.
Across these schools, persistent truancy has fallen by more than a quarter, officials said.
The scheme involved threatening the parents of persistent truants with an automatic court prosecution - including possible fines of £2,500 or three months in jail - unless their child's attendance improved after one term.
