STANDARDS of English for four to seven-year-olds at Southampton's schools are 13 per cent below the national target.

Children in foster care or local authority care are also a massive 50 per cent behind in maths and English and 40 per cent behind in science according to a report which looks at the performance of children in the city's schools last year.

Four to seven-year-old girls are ten per cent ahead of boys in reading. Infant girls are also outperforming boys in spelling and maths.

Looked-after children aged between five and seven also perform "significantly" below the average for local education authorities throughout the UK according to the report.

But pupils achieving five or more A* to G GCSE passes improved from 2001 and continue to be on target for further improvement.

City education bosses have admitted that the rate of progress for literacy and numeracy is "not as steep" as they had hoped for.

They blame the results on "over-estimating" the rate of progress city youngsters would make.

Rosemary Tong, Southampton City Council's Head of Education Quality Services, said: "The targets for 2002 were set two years earlier in 2000. At that time, the literacy and the numeracy hours were beginning to make a big difference to results.

"By 2002, we found they had continued to make a difference - we had gained 10 per cent over four years - but the rate of progress was not as steep as we had hoped for.

"This is because we had over-estimated the rate of progress and over-estimated the difference that the literacy and numeracy hours would continue to make in the longer term after the early gains."

She added: "However, we are pleased that the rate of progress in Southampton last year was greater than the national rate.

"We are continuing with literacy and numeracy hours, but we are also looking now to develop the curriculum in line with the government's new document called "Excellence and Enjoyment" and we are confident that this will help us make a further step forward in raising standards."

English results have improved at GCSE level since 2000 and performance at maths GCSE also continues to improve.

Boys taking GCSEs closed the gap on girls in 2002 with Southampton's difference being close to the national average.

Girls are still ahead of boys by a slightly larger gap than the national one on all performance indicators - including core subjects, with achievement by boys being described as "low" compared with national figures.

The most significant difference is in boys' achievement at higher grades in English and maths which is close to 12 per cent below the national average for boys.

But the picture is further complicated with boys outperforming girls in some of the city's schools.

Standards have continued to improve across the city's schools according to the report which was put under the spotlight by members of the City Council's Lifelong Learning and Leisure Scrutiny Panel.

The figures were also questioned by Pete Sopowski of the National Union of Teachers. He said: "The government-set targets can be quite wide of the mark. The National Union of Teachers is against testing targets and tables. People think teachers are against tests but the curriculum is skewed into doing them and it skews the whole of the school year. Teachers just think they are excessive."