Is “best ever” good enough? When the subject is the results of primary schools’ national tests for 11-year-olds, the answer, harsh as it may seem, is “no”. Overall progress in the three tested subjects — English, maths and science — is undeniable. Thanks to the tests themselves, it is also measurable. The proportion of children achieving the required standard has risen by one percentage point in each subject, to 80 per cent, 77 per cent and 88 per cent respectively. But what these figures also confirm is a dramatic slowing in the rate of improvement of primary school attainment since 2000.

After four years, Labour’s national numeracy and literacy strategies hit a plateau where they now remain. New ideas, not including an end to testing, are needed to reinvigorate these strategies. For this reason, the announcement by Lord Adonis of renewed efforts to standardise phonics- based reading and bring forward the teaching of arithmetic is welcome, and teachers’ unions must learn to live with them. It is not just pupils’ happiness in their final year at primary school that is at stake, but the viability of the secondary system for which they are being prepared. The single most troubling finding to emerge from yesterday’s results is that two fifths of the 600,000 pupils taking national tests at 11 failed to reach the required Level 4 in at least one subject — a figure unchanged from last year. The significance for these pupils’ secondary education is clear. According to the Government’s data, 70 per cent of those who achieve the ex- pected standard in all three subjects go on to win at least five good GCSEs. But barely one in ten of those who fall short at 11 go on to do well in their GCSEs, leaving the rest, in the words of a former Conservative education spokesman, “playing catch-up” for the rest of their school careers.

This long tail of underachievers takes some of the shine off the Government’s claim to have transformed primary education since 1997 It also points to the root of the most conspicuous and costly failure of two decades of education reforms — the continuing drift of academically struggling children from poor performance at secondary school to underemployment in the world of work.

Confidence in the basics is paramount for children entering secondary school. The Government wants an even stronger focus on reading, writing and arithmetic from age 6 onwards, and this should help. Too much tolerance of “alternative” approaches to basic maths would jeopardise any progress at this critical age, however, as would a failure of nerve on national testing or the publication of school league tables.

Able primary school pupils have no difficulty reaching the required standard in their core subjects. Less able pupils have no more important and ultimately rewarding challenge than to reach that standard while still at primary school, where the gap between fast and slower learners is still bridgeable. Individual horror stories about “hothousing”, though regrettable, are no reason to abandon the only system yet devised that gives parents, teachers, Government and pupils themselves an objective view of their own and their schools’ performance. Boosting Level 4 attainment from the current numbers to 100 per cent will be difficult, but it is a vital ambition in which testing and transparency play a vital part.