John Denham has welcomed news that Woodlands School and Chamberlayne Park School will get a share of £400 million to improve their results over the next three years.

The new funding is part of ‘National Challenge’, which will give extra support and investment to help the 638 schools nationwide where less than 30% of pupils get five or more good GCSEs including English and maths above that target by 2011.

The two schools will be part of the National Challenge programme.  Working with school governing bodies, Southampton City Council has been asked to revise their improvement plans for each of these schools by the end of the summer term.

John Denham said "School standards have risen over the last ten years, but we need to go even further to transform results in some of our schools with a particular focus on the core subjects of English and maths.

“I’m pleased that Woodlands and Chamberlayne Park will get extra investment and support to help them get above the 30 per cent target over the next three years. I want to work with both of these schools to help them use this extra investment to transform their results.  I know that  Chris Kelly (Headteacher at Chamberlayne Park) and Joanna Anslow (Headteacher at Woodlands) are both committed to improving results in their schools.”