Just four in ten pupils in the town's secondary schools are gaining a basic pass in the key subjects of English and maths.

Only Bristol's ailing education authority scores worse than Swindon in all the main statistics, meaning that the town has the second worst results in the south west region.

While the overall picture of GCSE results is improving, the percentage of teenagers gaining the new benchmark of five A* to C grade GCSEs including the core subjects of English and maths lies at 41.1 per cent.

Official figures released yesterday reveal that GCSE grades in the town have improved across the board, with 53.5 per cent of pupils gaining the increasingly downplayed standard of five or more good' GCSEs in any subject. Nationally, 46.5 per cent of pupils gained the five good grades including the Three Rs', leaving Swindon lagging somewhat behind the average.

The council's lead member for children's services, Coun Garry Perkins, said that there is a need for more cohesion across the authority to ensure all schools increase standards.

"Well done to those students who have passed, but we would expect things to be going on and getting better still," Coun Perkins said.

"We have to get more consistency as it's up and down across the town."

Coun Perkins said that improvements at primary school level, where the area is reaching the national average and even exceeding it in some subjects, would filter through to results in secondaries in the coming years.

"But we need to move faster than the four or five years that will take and we can't let those in between that time fall behind," he said.

Coun Perkins said: "In 2001 we were the worst performing authority in the country, so we are certainly making steady progress from that time when we were at a very low point.

"The people in our schools are definitely making the effort and we have to help them get even better outcomes.

"We are a small authority with only 10 secondary schools and need to work on spreading the best practice through all the schools."