ALMOST half of children are leaving primary school without the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Official unpublished figures obtained by The Times reveal that, after six years of schooling, 44 per cent of 11-year-olds have not achieved Level 4, the expected standard set by the Government, for the combined “three Rs”.

Ministers repeatedly emphasise that meeting this grade is critical for pupils to cope with the secondary school curriculum; 70 per cent of pupils who achieve Level 4 get five good GCSEs at 16, compared with 12 per cent who do not.

Two months ago Jacqui Smith, the Schools Minister, boasted that “this Government’s unrelenting focus on the basics is paying off”, after new figures for Key Stage 2 test results for Level 4 showed that 79 per cent of 11-year-olds had passed English and 75 per cent had passed maths this year.

However, the Government omitted one statistic, which showed in a provisional estimate that the combined percentage of all pupils who had passed Level 4 in reading, writing and maths tests was just 56 per cent.

In an e-mail shown to The Times, a member of the Department for Education and Skills, responsible for compiling the data, wrote: “We have not in the past provided an analysis of those pupils achieving Level 4 and above in the [sic] all of the above subjects, but have done so for English, mathematics and science. This figure will be released in the final 2004 KS2 publication, scheduled for June 2005.”

The results published in August did not include this figure, however. Instead, they revealed that 68 per cent of pupils had achieved Level 4 in English and maths; 79 per cent passed the English test, which combines reading and writing scores. When the English scores are extrapolated into reading and writing tests, those who failed at writing may have passed Level 4 English because their reading ability had pulled up the overall scores.

The Opposition is now calling on the Government to publish the final combined figure and question why it has been suppressed.

Last week Ofsted, the schools watchdog, said that thousands of children were starting secondary school unable to read and write properly because of poor teaching in one in three English lessons. In December David Bell, the chief inspector of England’s schools, said urgent Government intervention was required to rescue pupils from illiteracy. His endorsement of the traditional phonics methods of teaching English was backed by Nick Gibb, the Shadow Schools Minister.

Ed Davey, education spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, accused the Government of taking “their eye off the ball of the basic skills in primary education”. “This is hugely embarrassing for Ministers boasting of improvements and proves there are questions regarding how they are running the education policy,” he said.

However, Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, insisted it was the tests, not the ability of children, which were at fault. “End-of-year SAT tests are treated like rocket science but they’re very rough and ready and need to be taken alongside other reports.”

Much of the poverty of ability in reading, writing and arithmetic appears to lie with boys lagging behind girls in reading and writing. Alan Smithers, director of education and employment research at the University of Buckingham, says that, to overcome this, intervention is needed at a much earlier age.

He suggests that if children as young as 3 practised sitting still, talking to each other and grasping pencils in a more formal kindergarten setting, they would be more ready to learn to read and write when they reach primary school.

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