Conventional schooling was irksome and unfulfilling but music struck a hidden chord. England’s 10-year-olds have shown a dramatic improvement in maths tests over the past decade. A worldwide study yesterday revealed they had shown the biggest improvement of any country since 1994. In the 15 countries which have participated in all three tests, England’s score in mathematics has improved the most, by 47 points, to place it 10th in the world in an international league table.

The study is the first significant international evidence that the introduction of the Government’s maths strategy for primary schools – giving all pupils an hour a day of numeracy – has had a major effect in raising standards.But there is bad news: over the eight-year history of the project, by researchers at Boston University in the US, there has been no improvement in the standards of 14-year-olds. England languishes in 18th place out of 47, equal to Scotland.With the maths strategy now six years old, many of the pupils to benefit from it are older than 14, so England’s performance in the secondary school tests should also have started to improve.The study, which checked the school results of 47 countries at 14 and 25 at 10, showed Pacific rim countries to be streets ahead in all four tables. Singapore was top, with the Republic of Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong all performing well across all four areas.But in the science test for 10-year-olds, England was the top non-Asian country, and fifth in the rankings. In science tests for 10- and 14-year-olds (where England was seventh out of 47), British pupils showed a marked improvement in standards, solely down to improvements by girls.

English pupils also outshone those in Scotland in science tests and the 10-year-olds’ maths test. In the maths test for 14-year-olds both countries were equal.An analysis of the study by the National Foundation for Educational Research in the UK showed the 14-year-old English pupils’ biggest weakness in maths was number calculations, although they were stronger in data handling and geometry. In science, the 14-year-olds were weaker in chemistry, a subject in crisis with the closure of several university departments. They were stronger in chemistry, earth and environmental science.. One in three children at hundreds of primary schools still cannot read by the age of 11 because of poor teaching standards, it emerged yesterday. The report by Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, blamed poor teaching.Mr Bell added that too many schools adopted a “lacklustre” approach to teaching reading.

“This might have been understandable a decade ago but not today.”The report said there was “an increasing gulf between those schools that successfully tackle weaknesses in reading and those that do not”. Headteachers of what it termed “ineffective schools” often did not know enough about how to teach reading.In the low-performing schools, too many teachers had low expectations of how quickly pupils could learn to read through phonics – used increasingly in schools. One in four reading lessons was delivered unsatisfactorily, the study concluded, with teaching standards worse among seven to 11-year-olds than younger pupils.Teachers were criticised for too often leaving the slowest readers with classroom assistants who “did not always have enough confidence and knowledge about teaching reading”.Mr Bell said that he wanted to “nail one fashionable theory” that all would be well if children were “freed from the straitjacket” of the National Literacy Strategy “This is bunkum,” he said. “There is not pleasure in not learning to read and I, for one, do not want to return to the so-called good old days when many more children weren’t taught to ready properly.”He also wanted to “nail another myth that it’s all to do with the background of the children”. He said: “It is simply not good enough for some schools to lay the blame for low reading standards on the children, parents or outside influences.”The report said that schools were also failing to do enough to encourage youngsters to read at home. “In some schools, even able readers were restricted by the school’s policy to follow the structure of reading scheme,” the report said. It cited the story of one bright girl who took home a reading scheme book and finished it in a couple of days but was told by her teacher she would have to wait a week to change it “because you can only change it on a Tuesday”.Mr Bell also urged parents to do more to encourage their children to read.