See The Times' survey of the results of National Challenge Schools

Nearly half the secondary schools on a government hit list of failing schools are no longer officially underperforming, new government figures show.

But 97 schools with a previously satisfactory performance to have fallen into the failing category on the basis of this year’s GCSE results, officials have admitted.

Officials last night hailed the figure as a “tremendous achievement”, as it means that the number of underachieving schools, known as National Challenge schools, has fallen from 638 to 475 within the space of a year.

But head teachers condemned the policy of naming and shaming National Challenge schools and said that hundreds of schools have been left in limbo about their future.

When the list was drawn up in May ministers told 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.

Although at least 260 of the schools have now moved above the 30 per cent mark, it still not clear whether this means the threat of new management has been lifted from them.

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.

Mr Balls has said that it would be wrong for the extra support for National Challenge schools to be switched on and off like a tap on the basis of one year’s results.

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.

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.

He added that Mr Balls had appointed a leading expert in school turnaround to run a new network of advisers. Professor David Woods, who has more than twenty years’ experience working on school improvement projects and is Principal Adviser to the City Challenges, will become the principal National Challenge Adviser leading a nationwide network of experts that will work with Local Authorities on the detail of individual schools.

Mr Balls has already appointed, the highly respected expert, Sir Mike Tomlinson to chair a new National Challenge Panel of Expert Advisers to support low attaining schools.

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