The performance of children attending disadvantaged primary schools continues to improve, according to a report evaluating their progress.

The latest tests carried out by the State's Educational Research Centre show children currently attending DEIS schools outperforming their counterparts in previous years at all grade levels and in both reading and mathematics.

The DEIS system provides additional supports to schools judged to be most in need.

However, many schools that are not included in the DEIS scheme argue that their socio-economic profiles means they should be.

The ERC tests children in DEIS schools every three years.

The latest round of testing involved 17,000 students in 118 schools.

It found much of the improvement in reading and maths over the past ten years was among lower achievers.

For example, the percentage of sixth class pupils scoring at or below the tenth percentile in reading fell from 28% in 2007 to 18% in 2016.

In maths that percentage fell from 31% to 15% over the same period.

The ERC also found that school attendance in DEIS schools had constantly improved over the past ten years, as did the proportion of children saying that they liked school.

More than three quarters of children said they liked school, or liked it a lot, and children who liked school had higher reading scores.

Children in third class were twice as likely to say they liked school compared to children in sixth class.

But 12% of third class pupils said they disliked school a lot.

Pupils' educational aspirations, their hopes and their expectations have also increased with each round of testing.

However, the researchers noted that there was still a substantial gap between children's hopes in terms of education, and what they see as realistic.

For example, while more than 76% of sixth class pupils said they wished to go to college or university, less than 58% thought that they actually would.

The latest data shows that the performance of children in the country's most disadvantaged schools - known as Band 1 schools - remains considerably below national norms.

However, the performance of pupils in less disadvantaged, or Band 2, DEIS schools is approaching or surpassing national norms in several instances, most notably in maths.

The researchers say it is unclear how much of all these educational improvements can be directly attributed to the DEIS programme and the additional supports that it provides.

This is because this research project does not have a control group - schools with a similar profile but not within DEIS - with which to compare.

They point out that national standards in reading and maths also improved between 2009 and 2014.

But they say it is possible that the continuing gap between DEIS and other schools could have widened during this period but for the DEIS programme.