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Primary school league tables published today contain partial results or no results at all for some schools, following last summer’s marking fiasco.

Failure of the private contractor ETS to complete the marking of national curriculum test papers resulted in test scripts going missing before they could be marked and a deluge of appeals on papers that were eventually returned to schools.

Test papers for hundreds of children were never recovered, leaving schools to award marks to pupils on the basis of internal assessments, which cannot be included in the league tables. ETS was subsequently dismissed.

The latest primary school national curriculum test results show that the proportion of 11-year-olds achieving top marks in English, maths and science dropped significantly last summer.

Results of the Key Stage 2 primary school tests show a steep decline in the number of children attaining Level 5 scores, the maximum possible.

This suggests that the brightest students are being neglected as teachers concentrate on raising the attainment of borderline pupils performing at just below national standards.

At a national level, the proportion of children achieving a Level 5 score in English fell from 34 to 30 per cent, in science from 46 to 44 per cent, and in maths from 32 to 31 per cent.

While part of the fall can be attributed to changes in the marking scheme, this does not explain the scale of the drop.

Overall, the results show that almost four in ten 11-year-olds are still leaving primary school without mastering reading, writing and maths.

There were modest improvements in results at Level 4, the standard considered necessary to have a chance of doing well at secondary school. The rate of progress at Level 4 has slowed considerably in the past decade, however, suggesting that schools are now having to work harder for the smallest of gains.

The proportion of 11-year-olds reaching Level 4 in English improved by one percentage point to 81 per cent, and in maths by two percentage points to 79 per cent. In science, 88 per cent of children achieved a Level 4 pass, the same as last year.

School-by-school results published here today, show that two schools share the best performing spot in England. At one, Combe Church of England school in Witney, Oxfordshire, pupils study philosophy and thinking skills. The other, Meadow Hall primary in Kettering, Northamptonshire, is a new school that opened seven years ago to serve a recently built commuter housing development, where the head teacher has been able to pick all her staff from scratch.

Another top-performing school is St Mary’s Church of England Primary, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where all 88 pupils take regular “brain breaks” and exercise to loud music to get their minds on the task.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry, the Schools Minister, said that the results represented a significant improvement on 1997, when Labour came to power and almost half of children left primary school having failed to reach the expected level in both English and maths. But she recognised that there was still some way to go.

“That is why programmes such as Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts, which offer targeted early intervention for children showing signs of struggling with the basics, are so important to our drive towards a world class education," she said.

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