2023 KS2 SATs results analysis

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Learning by Questions in July 2023.

Given the SATs marking chaos this year, it’s a surprise we even made it to this point! But here we are – the dreaded (long-awaited?) results day. I remember being on a residential one year when the results came out; my partner teacher and I sat with lukewarm, anaemic cups of tea in a freezing cold ‘staffroom’ (if you’ve been on a residential before, you know the sort…) hitting refresh on The World’s Slowest Laptop trying to access the elusive PAG page. Hopefully, at the very least, most of you are experiencing this annual joy in the warmth of your headteacher’s office, this year!

What were the KS2 SATs 2023 pass marks?

The raw scores required to reach expected standard (EXS – a scaled score of 100) and ‘greater depth’ (GDS – generally accepted to be a scaled score of 110) can be seen below.

SATs 2023 average scaled scores

As usual, there have been no drastic changes to the average scaled scores in each subject – in fact, since last year, there have been no changes at all.

How many children achieved the expected standard in 2023?

Reading

Disregarding 2016 as an anomaly, the percentage of children achieving EXS in reading has historically hovered in the low-mid 70s. Reading was the only subject not to drop following COVID. However, this year, it is the only subject in which national attainment has fallen since last year (and that’s even with one of the lowest ‘pass’ marks its ever had), from 75% in 2022 to 73% in 2023.

Writing

After a drop of 9% last year (to be expected after COVID), writing results have now risen by 2%, from 69% in 2022 to 71% this year.

Maths

The maths results also saw a drop last year, with the lowest proportion of children achieving EXS since 2016. They are back on the rise again this year with 73%, up 2% last year.

Reading, writing, maths (combined)

There is no change from last year at 59%, again, the lowest since 2016.

Grammar, punctuation and spelling

This year’s data also remains unchanged from last year at 72% with, again, the lowest ever percentage of children achieving EXS.

Note: There is missing data for writing in 2016 and 2017 as changes made within the 2017/18 writing TA frameworks mean that judgements in 2018 are not directly comparable to those made using the previous interim frameworks in 2016 and 2017.

Maths results analysis

The pass mark for maths this year is the lowest it’s ever been at 56/110 – historically, it’s always been between 57-61. The same pattern follows for the typically accepted ‘GDS’ boundary (assuming this stays at a scaled score of 110) – again, it’s the lowest it’s ever been at 94/110 (the range has previously been between 95-98).

Continue reading this blog here.

2023 KS2 SATs English papers analysis

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Learning by Questions in May 2023.

Well, hasn’t this year’s reading paper caused quite the stir? So much so that this BBC article was written days after children sat the test and the papers were released earlier than they ever have been “due to public interest in the tests”. I think a hotspot of Texan bats is going to go down in the SATs hall of fame, alongside the bewilderingly milling warthogs of 2016…

Predictions vs the real thing

Firstly, let’s have a look to see how our predictions for this paper earlier this year held up…

Prediction: The majority of the questions in the reading papers have always been retrieval (2b) and inference (2d) – this was still the case in 2022 and so it seems sensible to expect it to be the same in 2023 as well.

As you can see below, this indeed continues to hold true. In fact, this year’s test contained the highest proportion of inference questions that we’ve ever seen – nearly half the paper! 

The amount of vocabulary-focused questions (content domain 2a) was back up to levels similar to those seen in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Like last year, there were no questions based on authorial choice (2g) or comparisons (2h). Prediction questions (2e) also had no representation this year, just like years 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Prediction: A poetry extract hasn’t appeared since 2018, so it may be sensible to assume that a poem might be included in the 2023 reading papers.

I know, I know – I’m sorry! SURELY poetry has to appear next year, right?

Wordiest ever Reading SATs paper

Since the new style SATs began in 2016, in this year’s reading paper (I’m using ‘wordy’ here to mean the amount of words!):

• Extract 1 was the second wordiest extract 1 ever (closely beaten by 2019’s Extract 1)
• Extract 2 was the wordiest extract 2 ever
• Extract 2 was the wordiest non-fiction extract ever
• Extract 2 was the second wordiest extract ever
• Extract 3 was one of the least wordy extract 3s (last year’s was less wordy)
• The entire paper was the second wordiest paper ever (closely beaten by 2019’s paper)

Other points to note:

Continue reading this blog here.

2023 KS2 SATs maths papers analysis

Over the past few years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Learning by Questions in June 2023.

Here we go again! Back at crunching numbers, but this time for the maths papers (admittedly my favourite ones to analyse as there is SO much to get stuck into).

Content of the maths papers 2023

This year’s reasoning papers have been amongst the least “wordy” (as in, frequency of words) so far.

It certainly isn’t the case that the less “wordy” a paper is, the easier it is, as we will see below. Whilst it could be argued that the children have more time to complete the questions (as they have fewer words to read), the complexity of the maths required this year certainly balances it out.

Past predictions vs reality

In December, we made some basic predictions about this year’s maths papers:

Prediction: In theory, children should be able to meet the expected standards by exclusively knowing content from the calculations and FDP content domains. It’s probably safe to assume that the same topics will appear in a similar proportion in 2023.

We saw two large hikes in the proportion of calculations questions, firstly from 2017 to 2018 (a 7% increase) and then again from 2019 to 2020 (another 8% increase). In fact, this amount has increased every year until now: for the first time, we’ve seen a drop in representation of the calculations content domain, albeit only by 2%.

Continue to read this blog here.

SATs 2023: topics to prioritise

Over the past few years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Learning by Questions in December 2022.

2022 saw the first set of SATs papers after a three-year hiatus – did anyone miss them?! Now that we’re back into the swing of all things assessment, and after analysing the content of all five existing sets of SATs papers, we can make some (rather general) assumptions about what might appear in the 2023 SATs tests.

KS2 SATs Maths Paper Analysis and Tips

Like previous years, it is still the case that in every set of maths papers so far, over half the content has come from the curriculum of Years 3-5. In the most recent SATS, the content from Years 3-5 was higher than ever before and yet the pass mark remained at 53%. (It is worth mentioning that these papers were originally intended for 2020 and therefore it could not be possible for the test writers to make any adjustments because of Covid ‘gaps’.) The ‘pass’ mark each year has been between 52-55%. Theoretically, children should be able to meet the expected standards by almost exclusively knowing content from Years 3-5.

Continue reading this blog here.

SATs 2022: analysis of maths papers

Over the past few years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Third Space Learning in May 2022.

The KS2 SATs papers have been released, the SATs embargo cloud has cleared, and we can finally talk about the SATs 2022 maths papers in detail. Here, we join our popular author, Sophie Bartlett, as she takes us through a question level analysis of this year’s papers, questions and domain coverage.

Before we kick things off, it’s worth mentioning that the papers we’re about to explore are actually the postponed 2020 papers. This means no allowances for Covid gaps, unlike the GCSE maths papers.

And how have we created this blog? Well, Sophie has painstakingly analysed and pulled together the actual SATs paper questions and data from this year (and previous years!), as well as thoughts from the social media community along with her own impressions as a Year 6 teacher.

We’ll start with some general points, and then drill down into individual papers and questions. More of the examples are drawn from the Reasoning paper as that’s where the examiners excel at finding ways to concoct a question.

Mixed response to the level of difficulty and cognitive demand

From discussions with colleagues and perusing reactions on social media, Year 6 teachers’ general impression was that the cognitive demand was quite high across these sets of papers.

However, many people also agreed that this was fair in regards to challenging those children who should be aiming for ‘Greater Depth’ in maths.

If you’ve also read Third Space Learning’s previous blog covering the maths SATs 2022 survey results, you will know that there were mixed reactions to this year’s set of papers.

Survey feedback covered a variety of interpretations, from difficult first questions and multi-step problems to content coverage in teaching v. Year SATs revision and the Covid context.

Whilst some people felt the maths SATs papers were fair…

… others disagreed.

A common complaint was the number of words and the complexity of the language in the maths reasoning KS2 papers. This was certainly a dominant theme from survey respondents too!

Continue reading this blog here.

SATs 2022: results analysis

Over the past few years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Third Space Learning in July 2022.

It’s 7.25am on SATs results 2022, you’re sitting at your laptop with your hot beverage of choice, and you’re ready to hit refresh incessantly on the Primary Assessment Gateway from 7.30am. Little do you know you’ll be there over an hour later with the error message branded into your eyes as you’ve had to look at it for so long!

Ah, the pleasures of SATs results morning. Come midday, most primary schools had their results (and the national averages) and were most likely sitting furiously analysing them. 

So, three years on since we last endured this together… What does Year 6 look like right now, after over two years of pandemic disruption?

National attainment was notably down from 2019 (as expected)

Let’s start by looking at the national picture for SATs 2022.

• 74% of pupils met the expected standard in reading, up by 1% from 73% in 2019.
• 71% of pupils met the expected standard in maths, down by 8% from 79% in 2019.
• 69% of pupils met the expected standard in writing, down by 9% from 78% in 2019.
• 59% of pupils reached the expected standard in all of reading, writing and maths, down by 6% from 65% in 2019.
• 72% of pupils met the expected standard in English grammar, punctuation and spelling, down by 6% from 78% in 2019 (remember, however, that grammar, punctuation and spelling test (GPS) results do not count towards the school accountability measures).

Apart from English reading, national attainment in all other areas dropped from 2019. Of course, you’d assume that this is to be expected considering the turbulent time children have had in school over the past couple of years. 

There is missing data for writing in 2016 and 2017 as changes made within the 2017/18 writing TA frameworks mean that judgements in 2018 are not directly comparable to those made using the previous interim frameworks in 2016 and 2017.

While reading results are the second highest they’ve ever been (narrowly beaten by 2018, with a national attainment of 75%), it’s a different story for the rest.

Writing and GPS are both the lowest they’ve ever been, with only 69% and 72% of pupils achieving EXS respectively.

Maths is the second lowest it’s ever been at 71% – it was its lowest in 2016 with 70% of children achieving EXS.

The combined reading, writing and maths attainment is also the second lowest it’s ever been at 59% – again at its lowest in 2016 with only 53% of children achieving EXS across all 3 subjects.

From a series of polls on Twitter with nearly 2,000 respondents, most teachers (41.9%) reported that writing was their lowest scoring subject this year and reading their highest (49.3% of teachers).

This pattern followed through with GDS, with most teachers reporting their lowest greater depth result in writing (62.3% of respondents) and highest in reading (54.9%).

Most teachers (47.9%) said their results were similar to what they had expected, with 38.5% reporting that they had done better than expected, and 13.7% saying they had done worse.

Continue reading this blog here.

What will be in the 2022 SATs?

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Learning by Questions in January 2022.

So here we go again… we had four years of SATs papers under the new National Curriculum, and then a (very welcomed, in my opinion) hiatus – until now. Whilst I’m in no rush to return to the pressure of SATs prep, I have to admit that a tiny part of me has missed the intrigue in finding out which weird and wonderful ways the powers-that-be have decided to present the curriculum material to the children.

I have analysed the content of the four existing sets of SATs papers – from this data we can make some (rather general) assumptions about what might appear in the 2022 tests!

Maths

In every set of maths papers so far, over half the content has come from the curriculum of Years 3-5. The ‘pass’ mark each year has been between 52-55% (60/110 in 2016; 57/110 in 2017; 61/110 in 2018; 58/110 in 2019): theoretically, children should be able to meet the expected standards by almost exclusively knowing content from Years 3-5.

Calculations (the four operations) has consistently been the most common topic to appear across all maths papers, with the next most common being fractions, decimals and percentages (FDP) and measurement. In the most recent SATs paper (2019), this changed slightly as the proportion of FDP content increased quite significantly. Again, theoretically, children should be able to meet the expected standards by exclusively knowing content from the calculations and FDP content domains. I think it’s a safe bet that the same topics will appear in a similar proportion in 2022 – so if you need to prioritise anything in the weeks before SATs, use the time to consolidate these topics rather than worrying too much about whether children can reflect or translate shapes (position and direction)!

Reading

In order to achieve the expected standard in reading, the pass mark had been set at 52-56% on the 2017-2019 tests (the 2016 test was a bit of an outlier with a pass mark of 42% – I’m sure there will be those among us that remember the horrors of the milling around in bewilderment fiasco!)

Continue reading this blog here.

Common mistakes on the SATs arithmetic paper and how to fix them

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Third Space Learning in April 2022.

Ask any Year 6 teacher which KS2 SATs test is the easiest to ‘pick up points’ on, and they’ll most likely say the SATs Year 6 arithmetic test. From personal experience, it tends to be the most popular amongst children too – possibly because the answers are so clearly either right or wrong. 

However, it is so common for children to demonstrate a much higher level of maths and command of the national curriculum during lessons, then perform much more poorly than expected on the KS2 arithmetic paper. The children have 36 questions, and 40 marks, to prove their arithmetic skills, and it is so easy to make ‘silly mistakes’ on questions that you know they know how to solve!

In my experience, the most common errors on the Key Stage 2 SATs arithmetic paper seem to be made in the 10 mathematical areas listed below (not forgetting those marks painfully lost on mistakes that are nothing to do with the children’s maths skills, such as missing out questions!).

In many of these question types, there is more than one way of solving them – competent mathematicians will know this and be able to choose the most efficient method. However, those children who struggle a little more may benefit from knowing one consistent method for each type of question – this is what I have discussed in the topics below.

Missing number addition or subtraction

Real examples from past SATs papers

1. ___ + 5 = 341
2. ___ – 100 = 1,059
3. 602 – ___ = 594

Common mistake

Not understanding when to use the inverse.

Try this…

Represent each question as a bar model to consolidate when to use the inverse (as in examples 1 and 2). Also try examples with the equals sign at the start of the equation (e.g. 245 = ___ + 23) as children most commonly see these question with the ‘answer’ (the sum or the difference) at the end of the equation.

Multiplication

Real examples from past SATs papers

1. 5,413 x 86
2. 71 x 46
3. 14 x 100

Common mistake

For examples 1 and 2: omitting a 0 as the place value holder on the second line of the long multiplication method. For example 3: choosing long multiplication instead of moving the place value digits!

Try this…

Continue reading this blog here.

2016 – 2019 KS2 SATs analysis

All percentages are rounded, and therefore may sometimes add to 99 or 101. Hope you find them useful!

MATHS

READING

For reference:

 ^EDIT. I have miscalculated some of the word counts it seems! Although the actual figures are generally similar, you can find a more accurate version here: https://readingsolutionsuk.co.uk/ks2-reading-paper-2019-how-challenging-was-it/

GRAMMAR

For reference:
G1 = Grammatical terms/word classes
G2 = Functions of sentences
G3 = Combining words, phrases & clauses
G4 = Verb forms, tenses & consistency
G5 = Punctuation
G6 = Vocabulary
G7 = Standard English and formality

Click here to read my 2016-2018 SATs analysis blog post.

Why are SATs important? (info for parents)

Over the past couple of years, I’ve written some blog posts which have been published on other sites. I’m quite proud of these and would like to keep them all in one place so I can find them again, hence my replicating them here on my blog. I haven’t copied and pasted the entire article as it does belong to the original site, despite being written by me, so please do continue to read it there if you find it of interest!

This one was written for Matr in April 2019.

What is the purpose of SATs?

In England, the National Curriculum Assessments (or SATs) are taken by the children at the end of KS1 (Year 2) and KS2 (Year 6) in May every year.

They assess the children against the age-related expectations as set out by the National Curriculum. The KS1 SATs are internally marked (by the teachers) whilst the KS2 SATs are externally marked (they are sent away with results being returned to the school around 2 months after the tests are sat).

For children, the SATs are used to form target grades in secondary school. For schools, the SATs are used as one factor – amongst many – in judging a school’s effectiveness, and these are two of the reasons why KS2 SATs are considered important by some in the education world.

What do the SATs measure?

When asking the question “Why are KS2 SATs important?” one of the most crucial things to understand is what they actually measure.

The SATs are used to measure both the school’s and the individual child’s attainment and progress. Attainment is the summative grade or level that has been achieved, whereas progress is the difference in attainment between one point (in this case, KS1 SATs) to another. Both are important.

Read the rest of the blog for parents on why SATs are important here.