THERE is a crumb of comfort in the Key Stage Two figures for the testing of 11-year-olds in Oxford.

Last month we revealed that the city had the worst results for seven-year-olds in basic reading, writing and arithmetic in the country.

That is nothing short of a disgrace.

The next set of exams, Key Stage Two, still place the city in the bottom 10 per cent. And the figures are still stark — almost one in three 11-year-olds is not reaching the expected level in English and Maths.

There has been an improvement on last year, and we can’t condemn our education chiefs completely because they do not have a silver bullet to cure this woeful under-achievement.

It is worth pointing out, though, that one of their given reasons for low attainment has been the city’s high proportion of children with English as a second language.

These figures, though, show that those pupils in Oxfordshire as a whole are still some way short of their peers nationally.

We give the county council some credit for this improvement.

But it is only one positive step on a journey for this city’s education of its future citizens. We will not (and cannot) tolerate any backward movement.