SATs

Resources for Parents about Primary Assessments

The Department for Education has published an information leaflet and 2 videos for parents of children in Years 2 and 6 about national curriculum assessments. The purpose of these materials is to help parents understand more about the end of key stage assessments that will be administered in primary schools in May.

They provide basic information about the purpose and format of the tests, how parents can best support their children and how results will be reported.

THE TESTS

At the end of Year 6, children sit tests in:

• Reading
• Maths
• Spelling, punctuation and grammar

These tests are both set and marked externally, and the results are used to measure the school’s performance (for example, through reporting to Ofsted and published league tables). Your child’s marks will be used in conjunction with teacher assessment to give a broader picture of their attainment.

This is information is to advise parents of how the SATs tests will be administered.

We are currently awaiting the list of tests and the dates that will be administered in 2021.

Most children will sit the tests in the classrooms normally used each day for their learning. The children will be split into smaller groups in line with normal classroom practice. This is done so that the children are comfortable and familiar with their surroundings and so that they can be spaced out appropriately.

Each room will have enough staff to ensure the correct administration of the test and the staff involved will have been given training on test format and style, their role and what they may or may not read to a pupil in a particular test including any subject specific issues that might occur. During the Reading test, no part of the test may be read to a student.

READING TEST

The reading test is a single paper with questions based on three passages of text. Your child will have one hour, including reading time, to complete the test.

There will be a selection of question types, including:

• Ranking/ordering, e.g. ‘Number the events below to show the order in which they happen in the story’
• Labelling, e.g. ‘Label the text to show the title of the story’
• Find and copy, e.g. ‘Find and copy one word that suggests what the weather is like in the story’
• Short constructed response, e.g. ‘What does the bear eat?’
• Open-ended response, e.g. ‘Look at the sentence that begins Once upon a time. How does the writer increase the tension throughout this paragraph? Explain fully, referring to the text in your answer.’

GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING

The grammar, punctuation and spelling test consists of two parts: a grammar and punctuation paper requiring short answers, lasting 45 minutes, and an aural spelling test of 20 words, lasting around 15 minutes.

The grammar and punctuation test will include two sub-types of questions:

• Selected response, e.g. ‘Identify the adjectives in the sentence below’
• Constructed response, e.g. ‘Correct/complete/rewrite the sentence below,’ or, ‘The sentence below has an apostrophe missing. Explain why it needs an apostrophe.’

MATHS

Children sit three papers in maths:

• Paper 1: arithmetic, 30 minutes
• Papers 2 and 3: reasoning, 40 minutes per paper

Paper 1 will consist of fixed response questions, where children have to give the correct answer to calculations, including long multiplication and division.

Papers 2 and 3 will involve a number of question types, including:

• Multiple choice
• True or false
• Constrained questions, e.g. giving the answer to a calculation, drawing a shape or completing a table or chart
• Less constrained questions, where children will have to explain their approach for solving a problem.

Not all children in Year 6 will take science SATs. However, a number of schools will be required to take part in science sampling: a test administered to a selected sample of children thought to be representative of the population as a whole. We will provide more information if our school is chosen.

SCORING & RESULTS

You will be given your child’s raw score (the actual number of marks they get), alongside their scaled score and whether they have reached the expected standard set by the Department for Education (‘NS’ means that the expected standard was not achieved and ‘AS’ means the expected standard was achieved).

The range of scaled scores available for each KS2 test is:

• 80 (the lowest scaled score that can be awarded)
• 120 (the highest scaled score)
• The expected standard for each test is a scaled score of 100 or more. If a child is awarded a scaled score of 99 or less they won’t have achieved the expected standard in the test.

As a school we support our children through the SATs. We want them to do the best that they can and we support them to do this in every way.

To see how well we are doing versus national results, please click into our Results page.

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