Primary school results: who are the higher achievers in maths? And does it matter?

The proportion of children in England achieving a good standard (level 4) of writing, reading and maths increased by two percentage points to 80 per cent this year, according to the school performance tables released on Thursday by the UK department of education. The improvement in maths was smaller, only one percentage point, but a higher proportion of children – 87 per cent- reached a good level in 2015.

In over 2,200 schools out of nearly 16,000 in England, all or almost all of the pupils (98% to 100%) were able to achieve a good level of maths. Among the towns with over 50 schools with available results, Wigan show the highest average proportion of children achieving level 4, followed by Blackburn, Warrington and London. Good maths results are homogeneously high and all larger towns have a proportion of good maths performers of 80 per cent or more.