TWO Oxfordshire schools spotlighted by the Government have said they will hit targets this year.

This week, Schools Secretary Ed Balls said 638 schools failing to reach a minimum standard would have to show signs of progress by the end of the year - or could face closure.

There are three in Oxford - Peers School in Littlemore, Oxford Community School in Glanville Road, and St Gregory the Great School in Cricket Road - and Banbury School.

Peers is in the process of becoming a city academy, set to open in September, while Oxford Community School is hoping to become a foundation school.

Senior staff at both St Gregory the Great and Banbury School said they were confident they would meet the required levels in this year's exam results.

John Hussey, headteacher at St Gregory the Great, said: "Following an email I have received I believe I am now head of a challenged school based on examination results from last August.

"We are extremely confident our results this year will be well above the floor target."

Schools are required to get a minimum of 30 per cent of pupils achieving five A*-C grades at GCSE, including English and maths. Both St Gregory's and Banbury School registered 28 per cent.

Mr Hussey said: "We have been working closely with the local authority on a range of initiatives to improve the performance of the youngsters in this year and in the future.

"I'm entirely confident we will have made the required progress and we have in fact already prepared an action plan."

Banbury School is predicting that 32 per cent of its pupils will get the benchmark of five A*-Cs when the results come out in August - with an estimated 54 per cent reaching five A*-Cs, not including English and maths.

Senior vice principal Scott Orchard said: "We believe we will fall out of that difficult area with this next round of results.

"We are slightly upset we've been put down as a failing school when we have just had an Ofsted report which said we were good."

He said the problem area had been maths and added: "We have known about this for a long time and identified a good year ago we needed to do some work on maths in particular.

"We have been working closely with our mathematics department and with the faculty areas to improve results."