The threat of closure was lifted from scores of schools on the Government’s National Challenge hit list yesterday as they attained significant improvements in their GCSE results.

Ministers had told the 638 English secondary schools on the list that they could be put under new management as academies or trust schools if they failed to improve.

Last year each had failed to reach the Government’s minimum target of 30 per cent of pupils gaining five or more GCSEs, including English and maths, at grade C or above. Yesterday a Times survey of 135 National Challenge schools found that 62 had moved above the 30 per cent threshold – some spectacularly so.

Heather Roberts, head teacher of Aston Manor School, in Birmingham, has seen her pupils’ pass rate rise from 28 to 40 per cent this year, thanks to Saturday morning lessons for GCSE students as well as extra revision classes during school holidays. “The 30 per cent target is completely unfair because you are not taking into account students’ prior levels of attainment,” she said. Nor does it take into account the sometimes difficult circumstances of her pupils. Four in ten speak English as a second language and more than six in ten are eligible for free school meals.

At Woodside High School in Haringey, North London, the head teacher, Joan McVittie, saw the rate rise from 17 per cent last year to 28 per cent. She hopes that successful appeals on six maths papers will bring this to 30 per cent. Much of the improvement has been achieved by providing extra support and training for teachers.

Parklands High School in Speke, Liverpool, was the worst-performing school for GCSE results last year with only 1 per cent of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grade C or above, including maths and English. Alan Smithies, the head teacher, said yesterday that this had risen to 15 per cent. “We are still looking for more improvement but [this is] massive in terms of the number of youngsters who passed five GCSEs without English and maths, which was nearly 50 per cent of the school compared to 29 per cent last year,” he said.

Ministers emphasised that schools passing the 30 per cent mark must remain in the National Challenge programme, at least until January, to see if their improvement is sustainable.

The future of many other National Challenge schools remains uncertain. At the Ridings school in West Yorkshire, which gained notoriety in the 1990s when teachers walked out over pupil violence, the percentage of pupils gaining five good GCSEs, including English and maths, remained at 13 per cent.

Schools that fell below the 30 per cent mark face the prospect of being added to the National Challenge programme, which will qualify them for extra resources and teacher training. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that it made no sense to judge schools annually on the basis of an arbitrary 30 per cent threshold.

Many high-achieving secondaries were facing a different challenge. Henrietta Barnett School, in the affluent suburb of Hampstead, North London, is one of the highest-performing state school in The Times results table (left).

This year 91 per cent of GCSE grades at A* or A. Oliver Blond, its head teacher, said: “GCSEs are not challenging enough for all pupils. The key for us is keeping all the girls interested,” he said.

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