A LEYTON secondary school is among five across the country to receive a slice of £45million from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

George Mitchell School, in Farmer Road, has been approved as a National Challenge Trust school, or one of a list of schools where less than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five GCSEs at grade A* to C.

Schools secretary Ed Balls announced on May 12 that a further five of these schools were to be added to the 16 already approved.

The funding is to go towards extra support for pupils including one-to-one tuition, learning mentors and revision help.

And although headteacher Helen Jeffery has said she welcomes the extra funding, she feels the school should never have been on the list in the first place.

She said: "I think the travesty for me is that we were ever involved in the list a year ago. What the Government did was to publish the list before the publication of summer results.

"Had they waited until September we would never have been on the list - we reached the benchmark of 30 per cent in August."

The school was at the centre of a row last summer after it emerged that it could close if its GCSE grades did not improve.

"We've improved by nine per cent in two years, but from the Government's point of view, our situation is still relatively fragile," Mrs Jeffery said.

Bur she added that the school needs as much funding as it can get and praised the support it has already received from National Challenge.

"They consulted with me at every stage to how I felt support for the students would be best allocated," she said.

"I'm not thrilled that we're on the list in one sense as I'm not going to agree that we're a failing school, but the quality of support received has been very good."

The school reached the national target of 30 per cent in 2008 and Mrs Jeffery predicts that pupils will "consolidate its position" this summer.