The audit also showed how some white British groups were falling behind in education compared with Chinese and Asian groups. Attainment data showed that white British primary school students eligible for free school meals — a program widely used as a proxy for poverty — performed worse than any other group, with only 32 percent reaching the expected level.

A study published last year by the Sutton Trust, an education charity, found that while poverty lowered educational outcomes, disadvantaged students from Chinese, Bangladeshi and black African backgrounds tended to perform better than their white working-class peers.

“Several explanations have been proposed for this shift,” the Sutton Trust report said. “The popularity of private tutors among ethnic groups and the latter’s concentration in large urban areas such as London (where average results have improved in recent years, with some suggesting that ethnic minorities have driven this progress), the impact of supplementary schools, and differing levels of parental aspiration, among others.”

At the time of Britain’s latest national census, in 2011, about 86 percent of people described themselves as white, with 80.5 percent saying white British. Around 7.5 percent said they were Asian or Asian British — those with Indian backgrounds made up the largest section of this group, followed by those from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds — and around 3.3 percent described themselves as black, African/Caribbean, or black British.

The data from Tuesday’s audit was published on a new government “Ethnicity Facts and Figures” website, which will be kept up-to-date by a specialist unit, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

While the report has been welcomed by members of Parliament, government institutions and charities working to tackle the issues laid out in the report, they have called for a comprehensive and coherent strategy that will result in action.