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The proportion of 11-year-olds achieving top marks in the national curriculum tests in English, maths and science has dropped significantly this year.

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

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

The provisional results for Key Stage 2 show that the proportion of children achieving a Level 5 score in English fell from 34 to 29 per cent, in science from 47 to 44 per cent, and in maths from 34 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 — the biggest year-on-year decrease since Labour came to power.

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

Only 61 per cent of the 600,000 children who took national curriculum tests this year reached Level 4 — the standard expected of their age group in all three subjects.

The statistics, published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, do, however, show an improvement on last year at Level 4.

The proportion of 11-year-olds reaching Level 4 in English improved by one percentage point to 81 per cent, and in maths by the same amount to 78 per cent. In science, 88 per cent of children achieved a Level 4 pass, the same as last year.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, welcomed the improvements at Level 4, but accepted that the fall in Level 5 passes was disappointing. He attributed the decline in English to a drop in performance in writing, not in reading.

“What this says to me is that we need to do better on personalised learning, regardless of ability,” he said.

He added that a new programme to improve writing ability would be introduced in primary schools from next month. This would involve new teaching materials and techniques that will get children to discuss their writing assignments before putting pen to paper.

Traditionally writing has been taught “in arrears” with pupils completing a writing assignment and then discussing it, he said. Now, teaching will focus on developing the writing before and while it takes place.

Nick Gibb, the Shadow Schools Minister, said the results suggested that the brightest children were not being sufficiently stretched. “Only one in eight 11-year-olds is now achieving the top Level 5 in the 3Rs,” he said.

This year’s results were published amid widespread concerns about the administrative errors in the marking and provision of results by the private contractor ETS. About 70,000 Key Stage 2 scripts were missing from yesterday’s figures and more than 450 schools are still waiting for some of their results.

The results were depressed slightly by the decision this year to end the practice of “borderlining”, in which students scoring a few marks below the pass mark were automatically re-marked. But this was not sufficient to account for all the decline in Level 5 results.

Mr Knight insisted that the results were reliable, although he accepted that there was room for improvement in the testing system. However, John Bangs, assistant secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said he did not understand why the tests had been published. He said: “The previous decision to remove borderlining, combined with ETS’s incompetence, can only increase the size of the question mark over the results.”

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT union, said that the results showed “steady and sustained progress”, which reflected the hard work of teachers and pupils.

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