Read the list of National Challenge schools and their results here

Hundreds of secondary schools have been left in limbo about whether they will remain on a government hit list of failing schools that are threatened with closure.

When the list was drawn up in May ministers told the the 638 English secondary schools on it 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.

A Times survey of 243 of the schools has now found that just under half have moved above the 30 per cent threshold. But many have been left wondering if this is sufficient to remove them from the government’s hit list.

Liam Nolan, head teacher of Perry Beeches Secondary School in Birmingham, where the proportion of pupils reaching the 30 per cent target has risen from 21 per cent last year to 51 per cent this year said he had not heard a word from central government or his local authority.

“We have moved from a failing school to being above the national average. But we have not heard from anybody what this means. Nobody has confirmed whether or not we will remain in the National Challenge,” he said.

The government has said it will provide National Challenge schools with extra support and advice, but Mr Nolan said all he needed was extra cash.

“If the National Challenge brings me a string of advisers, I don’t want anything to do with it. If they give me cash to hire more English and maths teachers so I can reduce class sizes, then I’ll have it,” he said.

Ben Slade, principal of Manor Community College in Cambridge, where the proportion of pupils reaching the 30 per cent target has risen from 26 per cent last year to 42 per cent this year, has also been left in the dark.

“There has been no communication with schools apart from a folder with cartoons on the front and a letter from Ed Balls saying we have got to come together to make schools better.

“Nowhere in any of this information is there anything to say that if you do well you will be taken off (the hit list).

“We have been offered no extra money, nothing has come to us and they don't even know how much money is available, everyone is poking around in the dark waiting for the next announcement from the Government,” he said.

Both heads said that being labelled a failing school had been a huge blow to staff and pupil morale.

Local government officials are also confused. Peter McGaw at Cumbria council has repeatedly asked government officials what will happen to schools that have moved above or below the 30 per cent mark this year. “I did not seem to get a very solid answer,” he told the Times Educational Supplement (TES).

Mr Balls yesterday congratulated schools that had risen above the 30 per cent threshold.

“While these are no longer National Challenge schools, it would be wrong for the extra support to be switched on and off like a tap on the basis of one year’s results,” he said in an article in the TES.

But a spokesman for the DCSF added that it would not be clear until January, when all GCSE results had been confirmed, which schools would remain within the National Challenge list.

“If a local authority is convinced that the school is on a very strong upwards trajectory, that might be a school that does not receive any extra support,” he said.

Schools falling below the 30 per cent threshold may be added to the list, but this may also apply to schools just above it, he added.

“If local authorities feel they have a school at risk of dropping below the 30 per cent or which is in freefall, they can apply for the school to be admitted into the programme,” he said

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