Many of City of York Council's primary schools are continuing to make good progress, according to government figures released today. York's 11 year olds are performing above average in both maths and english again this year. However, for the city as whole, results at Key Stage 2, level 4+ have fallen since last year.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) today published final results for this year's Key Stage 2 tests for 11 year olds. They show that:

At Level 4+, the expected level of achievement for 11 year olds, York schools perform above the national average in mathematics with 73.7 per cent achieving the expected level (compared to 73 per cent nationally), 75.3 per cent in english (75 per cent nationally) and slightly below the national average in science with 84.6 per cent ( 87 per cent nationally). At Level 5+, York schools perform above the national average in mathematics with 30.8 per cent achieving the higher standard (compared to 29 per cent nationally) and slightly below the national average in english (25.1 per cent against a national average of 27 per cent) and science (40 per cent compared to 41 per cent nationally).

17 York schools have improved since last year (based on the DfES Improvement Measure which takes into account Key Stage 2 Level 4 results in all subjects).

For the first time this year, the performance tables also include a measure which shows how much 'value' each school has added. These measures are based on the progress made by individual pupils from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2.

The performance tables show that: Between Key Stages 1 and 2, York's Value Added score was 99.5 which was slightly below the national average of 100. 9 York schools were in the top 25 per cent of schools in the country based on their value added score 2 York schools were in the top 5 per cent of schools in the country based on their value added score The Value Added performance of 27 schools in York was 'broadly average'

Patrick Scott, director of Education and Leisure, City of York Council said, "We have made real progress since 1996 and whilst I am disappointed with the fall in results this year this should not undermine the hard work and effort of teachers and pupils across York schools.

"We are already focused on improving Key Stage 2 results for next year and have been working intensively with schools. We believe we are in a position to make significant progress and continue the year on year improvement in results that we have seen over the last 7 years."