SATs Scores Explained For KS2 Parents: Everything You Need To Know About Your Child’s SATs Results
As a parent, without having the SATs scores explained (KS2), it can be difficult to know how to react when you’re told what your child achieved in their primary school tests.
Terms like “scaled score”, “expected standard” and “national standard” are dotted throughout the information that comes with SATs results. If all of this has you scratching your head, then worry not as we are here to explain the KS2 SATs scores for you!
In Year 6, your child will sit SATs in maths, English reading, English grammar, punctuation and spelling.
These exams are marked in a different manner to the Year 2 SATs, as these papers are marked externally. Your child may also sit a science SAT, but these tests are only given to 10,000 schools to assess national standards at KS2, and they are teacher assessed in most schools.
Your child’s school will have received the provisional results for both the schools’ performance and your child’s individual performance by the end of July.
At this stage, the results are only provisional, as they are subject to additional checking by schools and teachers.
Once the final Year 6 SATs results are confirmed, it is up to your child’s school to decide how they give out the results of individual tests to parents.
Most schools will normally send out an individual child’s results with the end of year report, but this is on the condition that the results have come back to them by the end of term.
The following results and league tables are all published in December:
Here are the most recent National SATs results from 2019:
The National SATs results record the percentage of pupils nationally who have met ‘the expected standard’ in the subject. This means they have achieved a scaled score of 100 or more. See below for more information on these.
School SATs results are much more variable than national results, so it’s not uncommon to see a drop or a rise of 30 or 40 points in percentage terms from one year to the next. If you think about it, just 3 children fewer out of a class of 30 achieving the expected standard from one year to the next will mean 10% fewer have passed their SATs that year. And inevitably there are differences between cohorts in a school.
You may also see wide variation between scores in different subjects at a school. This is why the ‘combined SATs score’ measure was introduced. It aims to ensure that schools are looked at for their success ‘in the round’ not just in their ability to get 100% of their children to reach the expected standard in maths.
When attempting to understand SATs scores, one source of confusion for many parents is the change that took place for the 2016 SATs.
Since 2016, the National Curriculum levels that were used to score SATs papers have been replaced by scaled
SATs scores.
This scoring method is used for school assessments in countries all around the world, and it is seen as a fair method to use when looking at test results. It allows for differences in the difficulty of tests on a year-by-year basis, which in turn allows different cohorts’ results to be compared.
To begin, your child will receive a raw score. This is simply the actual number of marks they achieved in their SATs.
Then, their raw score is converted into a scaled score and this is used to judge how well your child has done in their SATs paper.
There is a range of scaled scores available for both the KS1 and KS2 SATs.
In KS1, 85 is the lowest score available, and 115 is the highest.
In KS2, 80 is the lowest and 120 is the highest score your child could get.
Scaled scoring can often leave parents wondering whether or not their child has attained a ‘good’ score in their SATs, but the system is actually quite simple to understand once the KS1 and KS2 SATs scores have been explained.
It is important to note that what you define as a ‘good’ SATs score obviously depends on the individual child, and the base they’re coming from. For example, a scaled score of 90 would be a great achievement for some pupils.
120 – This is the highest score a child can get in the KS2 SATs.
101-119 – Any score above 100 (including 120) means that a child has exceeded the expected standard in the test.
100 – This is the expected standard for children (and essentially means a ‘pass’).
80-99 – Any child that is awarded a scaled score of 99 or below has not met the expected standard in their KS2 SATs.
Further reading: Official government guidance on scaled scores at KS2
In Year 6, SATs papers are marked externally, and teachers are not involved in the assessment.
Your child will again receive a raw score, a scaled score and an indication of whether or not they are working at the expected standard. You are unlikely to see your child’s raw score, but you will be likely to see their scaled score and a code that indicates the outcome of their test.
The KS2 outcomes codes that you may see are:
In addition to the KS2 SATs results, your child will also get teacher assessment results for reading, writing, mathematics and science. You may see some codes that you are unfamiliar with on this report, but the main ones you can expect to see are:
Something to be aware of is the fact that your child’s school may have other acronyms that they use in their reports. If there are any terms that you are unaware of when you receive the end of year report at KS2, do not hesitate to ask a teacher as they will be more than happy to clear up any confusion you may have.
Secondary schools are told the scaled SATs scores of their incoming pupils, and they often use them to stream children coming into Year 7. This will vary from school to school, so it is worth checking whether your child’s new school does this.
Some secondary schools also use a combination of SATs scores and their own internal tests to stream students, so this is something to be aware of should you be looking to give your child a boost in their mathematical confidence before the transition to secondary school.
In Years 1, 3, 4 and 5 your child will not sit any type of SATs (other than some practice papers). This means that they will not receive a scaled score and will be evaluated by a schools’ own internal grading system. For most schools, this will likely be measured on expected levels, with your child being either at the expected level or above/below the expected level.