Ministers have defended the expansion of league tables to include the results of tests for 14-year-olds.

Speaking on Wednesday, school standards minister David Miliband argued that for too long students had "drifted" during the early years of secondary education and that the figures reflected improvements in schools.

The latest data shows there has been a two per cent increase in the numbers achieving the required standard in English to 69 per cent, and a four per cent rise in those achieving the levels for maths to 71 per cent.

The number of students achieving the expected level in science rose by one per cent to 68 per cent.

Alongside these statistics, the government published "value added" figures, revealing how much progress each school had helped children to achieve in their first three years there.

"The early years in secondary school are crucial but they have long been the years when many pupils have drifted," said the education minister.

"It is very encouraging that our strategy to deal with this is beginning to deliver results. It is also vital that we have the best possible picture of how pupils are doing.

"Including value added information helps to do this, showing the progress that each school helps its pupils make between 11 and 14 in different schools."

But his argument has been rejected by head teachers.

"Performance tables are an unnecessary irrelevance," said David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers.

"They serve no useful purpose when the tests themselves are of a totally different order to GCSEs or A Levels. The publication of yet another set of performance tables is totally at odds with the government's express desire to cut the number of public service accountability measures.

"When will the government learn that introducing misleading performance measures will not improve standards?

"The value added model used by the Department for Education and Skills is flawed in its attempt to compare performance at 11 with performance at 14."

John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, also dismissed the league tables as "flawed, misleading and unnecessary".

"The league tables present a spurious rank order of schools, when the statistics on which they are based cannot sustain such detailed comparisons," he said.

"Key stage three tests are no more than a staging post on the way to the more important GCSE, A Level and vocational examinations at 16 and beyond.

"As such, today's tables add yet another layer to the accountability of schools. Parents can be given this information, together with national statistical comparisons, without putting the scores into the form of league tables, which shed very little light on the true performance of schools."

Liberal Democrat spokesman and former headteacher Phil Willis agreed.

"League tables skew parent choice, fail to give informed choice and, most serious of all, condemn children with low performance to an educational underclass," he said.

"Whilst ministers continue to place their faith in school performance tables, this research concludes that they are little more than a poisonous thorn wedged in the side of educational progress.

"Parents need more detailed individual information about school performance. The government must take note of these findings and think long and hard about the cruel deception that they perpetrate on parents."