AN inner city primary school in the North-East is celebrating life at the top of national league tables.

Delaval Community School in Scotswood, Newcastle, was named yesterday as the best in the country for improving pupils' achievement.

It was this year's top performer in the national "value-added" performance table published by the Department of Education and Skills, which ranks schools in England and Wales on the progress pupils make between key stage one and key stage two.

It showed pupils at Delaval had made more progress than children at any other school in the country.

The results were published alongside traditional national primary league tables, which measure the number of pupils attaining level four or above in key stage two tests.

Delaval's headteacher, Sandra Marsden, put her school's success down to the hard work of her staff and the backing of parents.

"The children have come from an extremely disadvantaged area but I think it's fair to say they have supportive families and good teachers and so they are deprived of nothing," she said.

Elsewhere in the region, Middleton St George primary, near Darlington, which was devastated by an arson attack in February, recorded a drop in results.

Last year, it was ranked third in the borough but has since dropped to 11, largely because of the disruption caused by fire, school chiefs said last night. Pupils had to be taught at a temporary base before returning to the school two months later.

A Darlington Borough Council spokesman said: "We have an excellent headteacher, staffing is back to full levels and we expect to be back to our best next year."

Headteachers last night criticised league tables saying they were based purely on results achieved by pupils in a given year and could not tell parents anything other than the relative ability of the pupils.