The Education Secretary will personally intervene to crack down on school absences.
Bridget Phillipson will this week write to the worst 100 school trusts and local authorities who are failing to get children back to the classroom.
They have been identified as needing to ‘urgently improve’ because their absence rates are ‘higher than expected’, a government source said.
The move aims to tackle the ‘persistent absence crisis’ in Britain’s schools, the source said.
Councils and trusts will then be expected to set out an action plan to improve attendance.
The Department of Education will also be doing daily tracking of attendance data to see ‘in live time’ which children are out of school on which days.
It aims to use the data to understand why some schools are doing worse on absences than others.
A government source said: ‘The Secretary of State is not going to put up with some schools coasting when it comes to poor attendance, when others locally are doing well – she is going to get hands on and fix the problems at source.
‘We’ll use up to the minute data to understand problems in struggling schools and get hands on with struggling schools, sharing best practice from better performers to drive improvement across the system.’
It comes amid warnings that Ms Phillipson’s reforms could put 16,000 teaching jobs at risk.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which includes provisions to change the law to ensure all teachers either have, or are working towards, achieving Qualified Teacher status (QTS).
But it fails to make clear whether it will apply to teachers already in classrooms. Government sources indicated that ‘unqualified’ teachers currently in post would not lose their job as a result of the legislation.