David Blunkett: "Strategies working"

The Education Secretary, David Blunkett, said the "excellent" results showed how well the government's literacy and numeracy strategies were working.

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.

Click here for this year's tables

"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.

Trend plotted

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.

Theresa May: "Labour meddling"

This year it was 75% - but Mrs May says it could have been 84%.

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.

'Appalling legacy'

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.

Successful action

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.

Writing standards trouble school inspectors

"This reflects the excellent work that is happening in EAZ schools to improve primary standards given the disadvantages that these schools face," he said.

"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.