STRUGGLING schools have been abandoned in the Government’s “reckless rush” to throw extra cash and freedoms at the very best, Labour warned yesterday.

Education Secretary Michael Gove came under fire for ripping up a pledge to tackle poor results at the worst schools in “the first 100 days”

of a Tory government.

Mr Gove had been silent on the issue since May – and had refused to back Labour’s successful National Challenge programme to improve underperforming schools, the Labour Party conference was told.

Instead, resources had been thrown at converting “outstanding”

schools into academies and into creating “free schools” – none of which are in the North-East or North Yorkshire.

Ed Balls, Labour’s education spokesman, said: “I am proud that we transformed hundreds of schools – but Michael Gove has shown he will abandon those schools to struggle.”

The National Challenge programme was hugely controversial, triggering accusations of “stigmatising” secondaries where less than 30 per cent of pupils achieved five GCSEs at A*-C, including English and maths.

In 2008, there were 17 in the region – four in County Durham, four in Middlesbrough, three in North Yorkshire, one in Redcar and Cleveland, three in Stockton, and two in Darlington.

The number below the threshold now will not be known until January, but Mr Balls released a list of 21 schools that had already revealed their 2010 results – and had been lifted above the 30 per cent benchmark.

They included Raincliffe School, in North Yorkshire (56 per cent), and Kingsmeadow Community Comprehensive School, in Gateshead (44 per cent).

Mr Balls added: “Our programme gave more help and support to under-performing schools in the most disadvantaged communities. But Michael Gove’s academies programme gives extra resources to outstanding schools in more advantaged communities.”

About 1,600 secondaries were below the 30 per cent benchmark in 1997, a figure that fell to 247 last year. Of 102 under-performing schools surveyed by Mr Balls, 78 hit the pass rate target this year.

At last year’s Tory party conference, Mr Gove vowed to target the 100 “worst schools”, saying: “We will remove the managements which have failed and replace them with people who know how to turn round schools.”

Yesterday, Mr Balls also stepped up his attack on scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future programme, saying: “Michael Gove has told hundreds of thousands of children ‘sorry, but you are not worth it’.”

And he highlighted the ditching of one-to-one tuition, free school lunches for half a million primary school children, breakfast clubs and hundreds of new play areas.

Mr Balls said: “He has cancelled many of the radical reforms of our Children’s Plan.

What a shameful record after just five months in government.”