One in seven schools miss target

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More than 300,000 teenagers left secondary school last year without at least five C grades, including the two core subjects. Ministers announced last June they wanted no school to be in this position by 2011.

Statistics published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families show that 440 schools are falling short of this target, down from 631 last year.

Schools that fail to meet this target are judged to be under-performing and fall under the Government's controversial National Challenge initiative. They could face closure or being turned into an Academy if their results do not improve.

The figures show that 47.6% of the 653,045 pupils who took the exams last summer achieved five or more good GCSE's (A*-C) including English and maths, meaning about 340,000 did not reach this benchmark.

At the 63 academies where pupils took exams in August, 35.6% of pupils achieved this target, while 60.4% got five C grades in any subjects.

The statistics show that at all schools, 65.3% of pupils achieved at least C grades in any five subjects, while 91.6% of pupils are gaining five or more GCSEs grades A*-G, which is considered a pass. The figures also show just 30% of pupils achieved grades A*-C in any modern language. This is the first year such data on modern languages has been included.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls welcomed the statistics and said the Government was on target to see no school falling under the 30% threshold by 2011.

He said: "We always said that around a third of National Challenge schools were on track and the figures published today prove this point. We now need to continue to concentrate on the remaining schools and ensure we are giving them the support and challenge they need to make sure no child is left behind.

"This is no time for excuses - I want every child to go to a good school and that means every school getting above 30%. We are putting in the extra resources to help heads reach this and local authorities will shortly be announcing their plans to make sure all schools reach this target by 2011."