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Thursday, 7 December, 2000, 11:09 GMT
Row over better school test results
The government has ridiculed Conservative claims that standards in England's primary schools would have risen faster but for Labour "interference" in schools.
The school-by-school results, published on Thursday, show that 148 primaries managed to get the best possible score in the national curriculum tests for 11 year olds, up from 102 last year.
His Tory shadow, Theresa May, produced figures suggesting that the rate of improvement had slowed under Labour - but the government says that is a "ridiculous" assertion.
"Standards in literacy and numeracy are rising, even though the Department for Education and Employment themselves admit that had Labour not meddled in our education system, standards would have risen even further," Mrs May said.
Her argument is based on projecting forward the average improvement in English and maths results during the last couple of years of the last Conservative government.
In 1995, for example, 49% of 11 year olds reached the standard expected of their age in English.
Similarly in maths, the improvement from 45% to 72% could have been to 88%.
"We welcome the fact that schools are being encouraged to share good practice, but David Blunkett's strategies to improve standards are too prescriptive," Mrs May said.
But her suggestion was dismissed by a senior government source who pointed out that the maths test had been toughened when Labour came in, to include mental arithmetic.
"Theresa May now seems to think that the answer to the appalling state of reading, writing and maths which we inherited would have been to leave schools to sink," he said.
"The fact is that when we were elected, fewer than 2% of primary schools were using what we now know to be the most effective teaching methods."
The most important change had been in raising achievement in the most challenging inner-city schools.
David Blunkett said he was particularly pleased to see that the results for 11 year olds in the first 25 education action zones (EAZs) had improved even more than the national average.
"The performance tables, as two new Ofsted reports confirmed last week, show that we are on course to meet our targets for 2002 of 80% of 11 year old pupils reaching the expected standard for their age in English and 75% in maths.
"We are announcing today that we are allocating £192m in the next financial year to be spent on literacy and numeracy with a particular focus on writing, where we still have more to do."
Ofsted raised concerns, not for the first time, that standards in writing were lagging behind the general improvement in English.
The table below shows the 150 local education authorities in England ranked on the basis of their primary schools' performance in the national curriculum tests.
The columns show the percentage reaching the level expected of their age in English, maths and science, and the sum of those results.
14 Dec 99 | Education
Poor writing worries inspectors