In the next couple of weeks, children in Year 2 and Year 6 will be the first to take the new SATs papers. These tests in English and maths will reflect the new national curriculum, and are intended to be more rigorous. There will also be a completely new marking scheme to replace the existing national curriculum levels.
At the end of Year 6, children will sit tests in:
- Reading
- Maths
- Spelling, punctuation and grammar
These tests will be both set and marked externally, and the results will be 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.
Key Stage 2 Reading
The reading test will be 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.
Key Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Test
The grammar, punctuation and spelling test will consist 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.’
Key Stage 2 Maths
Children will 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
Key Stage 2 Science
Not all children in Year 6 will take science SATs. Our children will not, we haven’t been chosen as a sample school. 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. For those who are selected, there will be three papers. At Earlsmead we will continue to collect evidence from taught science sessions and results from science knowledge tests, in order to make our final assessments.
How will Key Stage 2 SATs be marked?
The previous national curriculum levels have been scrapped, and instead children will be given scaled scores. 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 national average. The score needed to reach the national average has yet to be announced. Results and scores should be available to pupils sometime at the beginning of July, no dates have been confirmed yet.
