About a third of primary pupils are not reaching the expected literacy level for their age and stage, new Scottish government figures have revealed.

The figures - which were published today and are based on teacher assessments of their pupils’ abilities - show that 71 per cent of primary pupils were believed to be performing at the standard of literacy expected under Curriculum for Excellence (CfE).

However, that figure dropped as low as 59 per cent for the most-deprived children in P7, the last year of primary school in Scotland.

Writing was the area that primary pupils - who are assessed at P1, P4 and P7 - struggled with the most, with 74 per cent overall reaching the expected level. By contrast, 85 per cent were working at the expected level when it came to listening and talking.

For numeracy, 78 per cent of primary pupils were achieving the expected level, with those in P7 struggling the most. A quarter of pupils at this stage were deemed not to be performing as well as they should have been.

The figures have remained broadly similar when compared with last year. However, the Scottish government highlighted that there had been some modest improvement, with education secretary John Swinney “encouraged” to see an increased proportion of primary pupils assessed as achieving the expected levels of CfE “by up to 4 percentage points”.

The proportion of P7 children hitting the expected level for writing rose from 69 per cent last year to 73 per cent this year.

Mr Swinney added: “This coincides with the first year of our £120 million Pupil Equity Fund. While it is too early to draw direct conclusions from this data, I am encouraged to see the attainment gap has also narrowed slightly.”

However, opposition politicians said the figures exposed “the utter failure of the SNP government to tackle attainment”, pointing out that the attainment gap was growing at every stage of primary.

For literacy, there was a 20 percentage point gap between the richest and poorest children in P1, but by P7, this had grown to a 23-point gap. This was replicated for numeracy, for which the gap between the most and least well-off started at 13 percentage points in P1, but grew to 20 points by P7.

Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said: “We know that the attainment gap develops in early years - but the fact that in some cases it widens in primary is inexcusable.

“This is a consequence of 3,000 fewer teachers under the SNP, and £400m slashed from schools since 2010.

“SNP ministers claim that education is the top priority - these figures show that the poorest young people are being failed badly.”

Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith said: “The fact that one in three pupils is leaving primary school without reaching basic standards in literacy is the main worry.

“These literacy figures aren’t just bad news for the prospects of youngsters, but bad for the future economy, too.

“This report also reveals little progress on closing the stubborn attainment gap, and Scotland continuing to suffer from low teacher numbers.

“For an SNP government, which claims education is a number one priority, this should make shameful reading.”

However, Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, said the achievement data was “a good-news story for Scottish education”.

EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan said: “These impressive levels of achievement are a credit to the hard work of pupils and teachers across Scotland. This success also demonstrates that, despite soaring workload and declining pay, Scotland’s teachers are still going the extra mile to deliver a high-quality learning experience for the young people in our schools.

“Scotland’s teachers continue to provide great value to Scottish education, so it is time for local and national government to properly value teachers.”