Four out of ten pupils could not read, write and add up properly by the time they left primary school this summer, the Government said yesterday.

The national curriculum results for this age group improved slightly on last year, but the figures showed that 166,500 pupils did not meet the standard expected in writing, 67,000 failed to make it in reading, 54,000 could not reach it in science and 105,000 could not add up to the same level.

Lord Adonis, the Schools Minister, hailed the test results as the best ever, but critics said they showed that there had been little real improvement in recent years and that the literacy and numeracy strategies had run out of steam. Overall, the proportion of 11-year-olds reaching Level 4 at Key Stage 2, or the nationally expected level, improved for all subjects by one percentage point, with the exception of writing, which stalled at 67 per cent.

Of the 600,000 11-year-olds who took the test this summer, 80 per cent made the grade in English, 84 per cent in reading, 77 per cent in maths and 88 per cent in science. The figures also showed, however, that the Government had missed its targets in all areas and that only 60 per cent of the “Blair generation” of primary school pupils had met the expected level in all subjects, including reading, writing, maths and science.

Lord Adonis said that compared with 1997, 100,000 more 11-year-olds were achieving the standard expected of them in English and 90,000 more in maths, but he acknowledged that there was more to do. “From this September we are introducing further measures to accelerate the pace of learning,” he said. “There will be a renewed emphasis on phonics in early reading teaching, and in maths children will focus more on mental arithmetic, including learning times tables one year earlier.”

As well as teaching synthetic phonics, where children learn the sounds of letters and how to blend them to form words, more money will be spent on classroom assistants, one-to-one tuition, intensive reading and maths catch-up programmes and on better training for teachers, he said.

Achieving Level 4 at age 11 means that children should have the right skills to progress at secondary school. Figures show that, of the pupils who reached Level 4 or above in English or maths at Key Stage 2 in 2001, nearly 70 per cent went on to get five good A*-C grades at GCSE last summer, compared with only 11 per cent of those who did not reach Level 4.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, called on ministers to carry out a review of testing.

Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, said that the results showed that primary schools were doing as much as they could and that the Government needed to intervene earlier. Professor Smithers said that children should learn about the concept of reading and writing from the age of 3. He added that when children were achieving Level 4 in English, maths and science with marks below 50 per cent, and as low as 41 per cent, there should be a debate about whether they were reaching expected standards.

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