Just under half a million children and young people in state schools in England miss school every day. Indeed, improving school attendance has remained a key aim for successive governments. Various strategies have been adopted at both national and local levels in an attempt to tackle the persistent issue of school attendance with varying degrees of success. This study explores the effectiveness of one of those strategies--that of parental prosecutions--as a means of improving children and young people's school attendance. It reports on the effectiveness of parental prosecutions while highlighting some of the emerging patterns among a cohort of those prosecuted within one local authority during one academic year.