Ministers have rewarded Bristol secondary schools for their efforts to improve GCSE results.

Children's Secretary Ed Balls announced yesterday that seven schools will share £550,000, while five city academies will also get extra funds.

The money is part of the Government's £400 million National Challenge programme to support schools where results are low, often because of social factors.

Councils were told to tackle under-achievement earlier this year, and yesterday Bristol became one of the first authorities to unveil its plan.

Schools Minister Jim Knight said Bristol was ahead of the game and a pioneer of National Challenge.

"In terms of transforming the secondary schooling into a much more aspirational environment I couldn't think of a better place," he said.

He described the city's National Challenge plan as "really impressive" and said the authority showed initiative in becoming one of the first to rebuild schools and to develop academies.

Mr Balls said Bristol City Council showed "a readiness to take difficult decisions".

"In some schools it's about providing extra money for teacher recruitment in shortage subjects, in other schools it's about supporting business mentoring or particular curriculum innovations," said Mr Balls.

National Challenge was launched earlier this year when Mr Balls named 638 schools in 48 local authorities that had not achieved the "floor target" of at least 30 per cent of pupils achieving five or more good GCSEs including English and maths.

The money will be used for different projects in each school and more funding will be handed over next year.

Cllr Peter Hammond, deputy leader of Bristol City Council, said: "We welcome this additional funding to support continuing improvement of secondary schools in our city.

"The National Challenge local authority schools all have highly focused plans to continue to drive up standards and build on the improvements seen in 2008.

"The additional funding is being used for a variety of programmes to support students in current year 11, for example smaller class sizes for English and maths teaching, additional mentoring, after-school support and revision classes."