New figures out today show that schools in Oxfordshire are lagging behind the rest of the country in GCSE results.

The county's schools failed to meet targets set by Oxfordshire LEA. Tony Crabbe, the county council's executive member for schools, said poor teaching was to blame.

In contrast, the National Union of Teachers claimed low salaries and underfunding were making it harder than ever to recruit and retain staff.

The Government's figures show that 51.3 per cent of children in Oxfordshire achieved the benchmark five GCSEs at grade C or better against a national average of 52.9 per cent. The average points score achieved by pupils -- 34.7 -- was below the national average of 34.8.

Many pupils had also failed to reach the standard at GCSEs predicted when they were 14.

Tony Crabbe said: "Oxfordshire has made no improvement at all in the last year and that's a concern to me because in 1995 we were well above the national average. It's not because of underfunding because we've shown that Oxfordshire schools are funded as well as our statistical neighbours who all do better than us at GCSE.

"Schools have accepted that they are not performing as well as they should do."

Mark Forder, Oxfordshire branch secretary of the NUT, said underfunding and the high cost of living in Oxfordshire reduced the quantity and quality of staff.

He said: "Schools don't have enough staff because they had to lay them off last year and this year's budget didn't address that. Our secondary schools are in a desperate state physically and are overcrowded, and, as long as we don't address that, results won't improve."

But pupils at Oxfordshire's independent schools achieved a strong set of results.

The best was the School of St Helen and St Katharine, in Abingdon, where pupils achieved an average points score of 60.6, almost three times higher than that achieved by pupils at Drayton School in Banbury.

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