Bradford has fallen 11 places in national performance league tables for GCSEs - despite its pupils recording the district's best results last summer.

A total of 36.3 per cent of Year 11 pupils gained at least five passes, including English and maths, last year - up 2.3 percentage points on the previous year.

However, statistics released today by the Department for Children, Schools and Families now rank Bradford 136th from 149 local authorities across England. Last year Bradford was in 125th place. GCSE students throughout the district also remain significantly behind their national peers, despite Education Bradford announcing when it took on its ten-year contract in 2001 that its goal was to match national averages by 2006.

Across the country, 46.7 per cent of 15 and 16-year-olds matched or bettered the Government benchmark in 2007 - an improvement of 0.9 per cent.

Councillor Ralph Berry, the Labour group education spokesman, said the drop in the national ranking and existing gap to the national average remained a "cause for very serious concern".

And he accused Education Bradford of failing to honour the £360 million contract thrashed out in 2001 as it had still not met its own targets. He said: "You have got to say the rate of increase is not what we would want.

"I know there are clear signs of policies which are beginning to bite but the effort required to catch up with the pack is going to be quite considerable.

"You cannot take the position that children in Bradford have any less potential than those in other areas of the country but we are further behind than we should be."

Ian Murch, Bradford NUT branch secretary, said "no-one on the ground in 2001" believed the private company would match national averages by 2006 and 2007's results showed it was still a long way behind.

He called for "far more" resources to be put into education in Bradford.

He said: "Bradford is not doing any better under Education Bradford than it would have done if education had remained under the control of the local authority and may even have done a bit worse."

Stuart Herdson, Bradford branch secretary for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the original target had been shown to be over-ambitious.

He said: "I am not sure Education Bradford had a full understanding of the problems of Bradford when they took on the contract. We are not playing on a level playing field - it would be interesting to see how many of Bradford's statistical neighbours have reached the national average.

"I am not sure it's possible for Bradford schools to reach the national average with the amount of resources they get."

Councillor David Ward, Bradford Liberal Democrat group education spokesman, said the district would never reach the middle of the pack unless deprivation levels were addressed.

Ann Cryer, Labour MP for Keighley, said reaching the national average had been "a modest ambition but one that clearly could not be kept to".

However, Mrs Cryer said that education bosses could not "expect miracles" due to the large numbers of children arriving in Bradford schools without English language skills.

When asked whether Bradford GCSE results would match the national average by 2011 when Education Bradford's contract expires, its managing director, John Gaskin, said: "The gap between Bradford's results and the national results has narrowed very significantly since the start of the contract and our intention is to continue to narrow that gap at an increased pace."

He added: "These results show a real and sustained improvement has been made since 2001.

"There will always be fluctuations from year to year in the league tables. Since 2001 the trend in league position despite the fluctuations is very, very clearly upwards and reflects the rising trend in results from 2001 to 2007. In that time Bradford's rate of improvement has been 1.5 times the national rate.

"Not all of our pupils are achieving the results they should between Key Stages. However, our value added measures show that we achieve better rates of progress than some of the local authorities that have higher raw scores - a point that's often overlooked."

Councillor Colin Gill, Bradford Council's executive member for children's services, said: "I'm delighted to see Bradford's rate of progress is two-and-a-half times faster than the national rate but it's disappointing that, as a result of progress by some other authorities, we have slipped in the league tables.

"We must now accelerate the rate of improvement by ensuring we do everything we can to support teachers, governors, parents and pupils in their efforts to boost attainment throughout the district."