Hit squads of high-achieving teachers will be sent into underperforming schools, under Budget measures to raise standards.

Alistair Darling gave local authorities until the summer to come up with action plans to turn around the 638 worst-performing secondary schools.

Mr Darling said £200 million would be made available to extend the six-year-old City Challenge plan beyond its existing areas of operation in London, Manchester and the Black Country to the whole country - to be known as the National Challenge.

While the £200 million is not new money (it comes comes from underspending in other areas), the deadline for action plans is, and will focus authorities on the Government’s aim of eliminating underperforming schools.

Rose-tinted specs fail to offer hope

The obvious justification for Mr Darling’s relatively upbeat scenario is that the outlook is fraught with uncertainty

Background

• Darling's first Budget: the main points

• The Chancellor's speech in full

• Darlings first Budget: the reaction

• Chancellor hits the home budget as his debts soar

• Need to know: Budget 2008

The Chancellor delivers a modest Budget

As so often is the case, virtue, in terms of improving public finances, is not now, but at least a year away

Multimedia

• Video sketch: Matthew Parris and Ann Treneman

• Eco-worrier: should we be pleased?

• Green Central: round-up of the green Budget measures

Multimedia

• Red Box: a list of Darling's new enemies

• The winners and losers

• Video: the 'fingers crossed' budget

Over the past ten years there has been a fall from 1,600 to 638 in the number of schools failing to meet the minimum performance threshold of 30 per cent of pupils gaining five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths.

Gordon Brown has said schools that fail to meet the new threshold could be closed or merged unless they improve. And ministers are now determined to speed up the pace of change.

So yesterday Mr Darling said he would bring forward by one year the target of bringing all schools above the 30 per cent threshold.

“By 2011, we will ensure that every school is an improving school meeting the standards we have set,” he said.

He hopes to achieve this in part through the National Challenge scheme, which arranges for highflying head teachers, deputies and heads of department to be parachuted into underperforming schools. The scheme will help to link poorly performing and high-achieving schools through the formation of federations or trusts, grouping clusters of local schools, to share expertise and facilities.

It will also push for underperforming schools “in areas of greatest need” to be turned into academies – independent state schools - Mr Darling said. This would help to “drive forward a faster expansion” of the academies programme to achieve the Government’s target of 400 academies. Currently there are 83 open in 49 local authority areas.

Mr Darling also said that the Government would contribute £10 million to a £30 million “Enthuse Science” fund run by the Wellcome Trust, to provide training for school and college science teachers.

In a separate move to give a second chance to adults who left school with few or no qualifications, Mr Darling has set aside £60 million to help bring them to A-level standard.

The money will go towards expanding the number of apprenticeships and providing tailor-made training for employers where they have identified skills shortages.

The remainder of the cash will be distributed through virtual Skills Accounts for all adults, which they can use to buy education or training from a recognised provider of their choice. These will be piloted from September.

The Tories said the Budget measures on education amounted to little more than a repackaging of existing initiatives. Teaching unions welcomed extra money for struggling schools, but said it was not enough.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “School support is a very top-down process, in which various things are ‘done to’ the school. The Government must focus on the long-term health of the school, rather than a quick fix.”

He disputed the Government’s claim that there are 638 failing schools, saying that 250 of the secondary schools that fall below the 30 per cent threshold are already doing better than expected, given the needs and backgrounds of their pupils.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat children, schools and families spokesman, called for education funding to be reformed, with the introduction of a pupil premium attaching extra funding to children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Times Recommends

• Gazprom brands Ukraine 'a barbarian' in gas row
• Services sector raises fears over UK jobless
• Retailers surge as profits survive sales plunge