The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) has said about 200 schools around the country were still falling below "floor targets" of 65 per cent of children reaching acceptable standards in both English and maths.

If the schools have been languishing below the acceptable level for at least the past four years, they could risk being closed altogether.

A spokeswoman for Northamptonshire County Council said yesterday the authority estimated it would have about 10 schools included on the hit list, but added it was difficult to be precise on the numbers because Government guidelines had changed.

She added: "Such schools are our focus for additional support to ensure that they can improve and standards are raised. We remain absolutely committed to raising school performance in Northamptonshire to secure the very best for our children and young people."

The number of failing primaries, known as "hard to shift" schools, could rise if the DCSF expands the list to include those schools where key stage two results in either English or maths, as opposed to both subjects, were below the 65 per cent mark.

A spokesman for the Government department said: "We are not publishing a list of these schools as we do not think it is helpful to stigmatise them by naming and shaming them.

"Our priority is to ensure that children in these schools are able to achieve as well as they can.

"Local authorities should be supporting all primary schools to raise standards.

"We want to help all primary schools improve so that by 2020 every child will leave primary school ready to move on to secondary school, with at least 90 per cent of pupils achieving at or above the expected level in both English and mathematics by age 11."