National Challenge is an ambitious programme by the Department for Children, Schools and Families to ensure that at least 30 per cent of pupils in every maintained secondary school and Academy in England achieves at least five higher grade GCSEs including English and maths by 2011.

We do this by:

• getting behind the efforts of schools to succeed
• giving all pupils the chance to achieve their potential, and
• ensuring lasting improvement in all schools and Academies to make every school a good school

Latest news

Following the self-reported 2009 GCSE results by schools, we predict that the number of schools failing to reach the benchmark to fall to around 270 when the validated results are available in January 2010.

This would mean that only 1 in 11 schools is below the benchmark compared to approximately 1 in 2 (1600 schools) in 1997 and represents nearly a 40% fall compared to 440 schools last year.

Video series - "The Challenge"

Lilian Baylis Technology School is a fast improving school in Lambeth, South London.  In a series of videos, produced for Teachers TV, we follow the efforts of the headteacher as he works to improve results.

The whole series can be viewed using the player on this page or on YouTube. The videos are also available to download in .mp4 format below.

Part 1: Here we go again [45mb]

Part 2: Pressure [43mb]

Part 3: Good news [45mb]

Part 4: Targets [46mb]

Part 5: Moving the goalposts [46mb]