KS2 SATs: The Complete Parent's Guide for Year 6 (2027)

SATs — Standard Assessment Tests — are national curriculum tests taken at the end of Key Stage 2, in Year 6, by children in state-funded primary schools in England. They check whether children have reached the expected standard in the core skills before they move up to secondary school.

Crucially, they are chiefly an accountability measure: the results tell the government and the public how well each school is teaching the basics. They are not an exam your child needs to “get into” anything with, and — unlike the 11+ — they are not competitive.

Children are formally tested in three areas — Reading; Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling; and Maths. Writing is judged by the teacher across the year rather than in a test, and science is only tested in a rotating sample of schools, so most children never sit a science paper at all.

In 2027, the KS2 SATs run Monday 10 May to Thursday 13 May. SATs week is always the second full week of May, Monday to Thursday, with Friday kept free as a catch-up day for any child who misses a paper through illness.

There are six short papers in total, spread across the week. None is very long — the maths arithmetic paper is just 30 minutes:

In short: one reading paper (60 minutes, 50 marks); two GPS papers (a 45-minute grammar and punctuation paper plus a short spelling test, 70 marks together); and three mathspapers (one arithmetic and two reasoning, 110 marks together). Writing, remember, is teacher-assessed — there's no writing test.

In the summer after the tests, you'll receive a scaled score for each subject. Raw marks are converted onto a common scale that runs from 80 to 120, so scores can be compared fairly from year to year:

• 100 is the magic number — it means your child has met the expected standard for the end of primary school.
• 110 or aboveis broadly regarded as working at “greater depth” — roughly the top 10-15% of children nationally.
• Below 100means the expected standard wasn't met in that test. It's common, it isn't a failure, and it says nothing final about your child's potential.

For a sense of scale, in 2025 around 74% of children met the expected standard in maths, 75% in reading and 62% across reading, writing and maths combined. The raw marks needed shift a little each year — in 2025, for example, 58 out of 110 reached the standard in maths — because the scaling adjusts for paper difficulty.

Here's the honest, reassuring truth: SATs matter far more to schools than to children. The results feed school league tables and Ofsted judgements — which is why schools care about them — but for your individual child, the stakes are low.

There are really just two ways the results touch your child:

• Secondary setting. Some secondary schools glance at SATs scores when placing Year 7s into initial sets — but almost all re-test in the first weeks anyway, so early sets rarely stick.
• Confidence. The genuine value is what secure foundations in reading and maths do for the transition to secondary — not the number itself.

Your child's teacher is doing the heavy lifting. Your job at home is lighter and, frankly, more important: keep things steady, build the core habits, and shield your child from pressure. Here's what actually helps:

• Read together, daily. Ten to fifteen minutes of reading — and talking about what you've read — does more for the reading paper than any worksheet. Comprehension grows through conversation.
• Make arithmetic automatic. Times tables and quick mental maths underpin the whole arithmetic paper. Short, playful bursts — in the car, at dinner — beat long sit-down sessions.
• Get familiar with the format. A few past papers (free on GOV.UK) in the spring term take the mystery out of the wording and timing. Familiarity calms nerves; endless drilling raises them.
• Protect sleep and mood. A rested, relaxed child outperforms an anxious, crammed one every time. In SATs week, normal bedtimes and a decent breakfast matter more than last-minute revision.

Let me be straight: most children don't need a tutor for SATs, and I'd never want a family to add pressure where none is needed. But there are a couple of situations where gentle, one-to-one support genuinely helps:

• A specific gap is knocking confidence. If a child has fallen behind in a particular area — say, fractions, or inference in reading — a few focused sessions can rebuild both the skill and the self-belief around it.
• You want structure without the friction. Sometimes the maths at the kitchen table ends in tears for everyone. An outside tutor takes the emotional heat out of it and keeps preparation calm and consistent.

My focus for Year 6 is always secure foundations and a confident child walking into secondary school — not squeezing out the last mark. That's how I approach primary & KS2 tuition across Oxford — a free diagnostic to see where a child really is, then friendly weekly sessions in maths and English. And if your sights are set on a selective school instead, our 11+ preparation and guide to grammar schools and the 11+ are the place to start.