Children should be able to read fluently, record personal reactions to books, collate information from several sources and communicate ideas and facts coherently with proper spelling and grammar.

They should also understand basic maths and geometry, including fractions, decimals, multiplication and division.

Looking at the scores for individual city schools, Forthill tops the list, getting 95% of its pupils up to or beyond Level D in reading, 97.5% in writing and 98.2% in maths.

Barnhill and St Margaret’s are also among the high achievers, with scores above 90% in all three subjects. On average 78.7% of Dundee pupils have achieved Level D or above in reading, 68.8% in writing and 79.0% in maths.

There are some worryingly low scores, however. Charleston is identified as the worst-performing school, with 57.1% of pupils reaching Level D in reading and 52.9% in maths. Its success rate in writing was just 38.6%.

Overall pupils are only half as likely as their counterparts at Forthill to meet required standards.

Also towards the bottom of the list are Brackens, Sidlaw View and Whitfield, each scoring below 70% in all three subjects.

The data also shows the percentage of schools in Angus, Perth and Kinross and Fife where more than half of pupils are not reaching Level D in a particular subject.

Unlike Dundee, all three local authorities have a mix of large urban primaries and very small rural schools. That makes comparisons more difficult because in the smaller schools the results of only a handful of pupils can have a big effect on overall percentages.

In Fife, 5% of primaries have more than half their pupils failing to reach Level D at reading, with scores of 17% for writing and 8% for maths — an improvement on last year.

Angus has a failure rate of 3% at reading, 13% at writing and 12% at maths — roughly on a par with 2005. Perth and Kinross’s score is 8% at reading, 14% at writing and 6% at maths. No comparative data for last year is available.