An extra £55 million would help close the “unacceptable” education gap between rich and poor children in Bradford, a national charity has claimed.

Save The Children has called for a £3,000 “pupil premium” of extra funding for children from poorer backgrounds after GCSE results revealed a yawning gap between the attainment of rich and poor children.

The charity has said 49 per cent of the poorest children in Bradford managed five good GCSE passes compared to 68 per cent of their better-off classmates.

The charity’s Better Odds at School campaign aims to highlight the link between levels of deprivation at home and a child’s academic achievement in the class room.

The charity has said children on free school meals are less likely to achieve five A* to C grades than their wealthier classmates.

In Bradford, there are currently 18,336 children receiving free school meals across the authority.

Sally Copley, Save the Children’s head of UK policy, said: “It’s simply wrong that at every stage of schooling, the poorest children in Bradford do worse and make less progress than their better-off classmates.

“Having such an attainment gap is totally unacceptable in 2010.

“To break this cycle of underachievement, children from the poorest homes must be given high-quality additional support to ensure they can achieve their potential.

“To provide this, head teachers need substantially more money.

“By doing this, we’ll benefit all Bradford’s children in the long run – helping raise standards, improving results and bringing more money into schools”.

The coalition government has committed to a pupil premium, but has not yet said how much it will give per pupil, a decision is expected to be revealed after the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement on October 20.

Save the Children has called for the level to be set at £3,000 per pupil – doubling existing funding for the poorest children in order to pay for more one-to-one support or catch-up tuition, more after-school or holiday study programmes and extra teachers.

It has also called for schools to account for how they spend the pupil premium to show what impact it has made and for the government to set a timetable for the introduction of a higher Early Years premium for two to four-year-olds.