All About The 2026 Year 6 KS2 SATs
If your child is sitting their KS2 SATs this year and you’re not entirely sure what the process looks like from start to finish, you’re far from alone. The official information is out there — but it’s scattered across government PDFs and school letters that most parents don’t have time to read properly. This guide brings everything together in one place: every date, every paper, every mark, and what happens when the results come back.
What Are KS2 SATs, and Why Do Children Take Them?
KS2 SATs — short for Key Stage 2 Standard Assessment Tests — are national curriculum tests that all Year 6 children in England sit at the end of primary school. The children taking them in 2026 are aged 10 and 11.
The tests cover English (Reading and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling) and Maths. Writing and Science are not formally tested at KS2 — instead, teachers produce their own assessments for both subjects based on work done throughout the year.
One thing worth knowing early: SATs are not a pass or fail for the individual child. They don’t affect secondary school admissions. Their primary purpose is to show where a child is academically at the end of primary school, help secondary schools plan appropriate support from day one, and give the government a measure of how schools are performing nationally.
SATs results do not determine which secondary school your child attends. Some secondary schools use the scores to organise teaching groups, but they have no bearing on admissions decisions.
The Official 2026 KS2 SATs Dates
SATs week in 2026 runs from Monday 11 May to Thursday 14 May. All four days have scheduled papers. Unlike some previous years, there are no tests on the Friday.
Schools typically start papers in the morning, somewhere between 9:00 AM and 10:30 AM, often after a relaxed breakfast session. The exact timing is down to each school to decide.
If a child misses a test for a valid reason, the school can apply to the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) for a timetable variation. This allows the missed paper to be sat within five school days of the original date — provided the child has had no contact with pupils who already took the test.
Every Paper Explained in Full
Here is a breakdown of what children actually face across the four days of SATs week.
Monday — English Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling (GPS)
GPS Paper 1: Grammar & Punctuation
Short-answer questions testing grammar terminology, punctuation usage and vocabulary knowledge. Questions draw on content from across the full KS2 curriculum, not just Year 6.
GPS Paper 2: Spelling
An aural test — the teacher reads out 20 words and children write them down. Each correct spelling earns one mark. There is no time pressure as such; the pace is set by the teacher reading.
The GPS papers are sat on the same morning, one after the other, giving a total of 70 marks for English grammar across both papers combined.
Tuesday — English Reading
Reading Paper
Children read three texts totalling 1,800–2,300 words, then answer questions on each. There will always be at least one fiction text and at least one non-fiction text. The third text tends to carry the toughest questions.
The types of questions children will encounter include: retrieval, inference, vocabulary, summarising, author choice, prediction, and comparison. Retrieval and inference together have consistently made up between 70% and 82% of the reading paper in past years — so strong practice in those two areas pays off most.
Questions range from one-mark answers to three-mark responses. Multiple choice, short written answers and find-and-copy tasks all appear. Children work through the question booklet at their own pace within the 60-minute window.
Wednesday & Thursday — Mathematics
Maths is split across three papers, with Papers 1 and 2 on Wednesday and Paper 3 on Thursday. No calculators are permitted on any of the three papers.
Maths Paper 1: Arithmetic
Pure calculation questions covering operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, and long multiplication and division. No context-setting — just calculations to complete.
Maths Paper 2: Reasoning
Problem-solving questions with real-world context. Topics include measures, money, volume, data, shapes, geometry, ratio and algebra. Multi-step problems appear regularly.
Maths Paper 3: Reasoning
Same style as Paper 2 — reasoning and problem-solving across the KS2 maths curriculum. Equipment allowed: a ruler, protractor and tracing paper.
The total marks available across all three maths papers is 110. An important and often surprising fact: more than half of the content on every maths SATs paper historically has come from the Year 3, 4 and 5 curricula — not just Year 6 material. Children with solid foundations from lower Key Stage 2 tend to perform well.
How the Papers Are Marked
The KS2 SATs papers are not marked by classroom teachers. Once the tests are complete, the papers leave school and are assessed by a team of externally trained examiners — a process managed by the Standards and Testing Agency.
Writing and Science, by contrast, are teacher-assessed using evidence built up throughout Year 6. For writing, teachers make a professional judgement on whether a child is working at the expected standard, working towards it, or working at greater depth. A proportion of schools are selected each year for writing moderation visits by the local authority, which happen in June 2026.
Understanding Scaled Scores and Results
When results come back, children receive a scaled score rather than a raw mark. Here’s what that means in practice.
A child’s raw score (the actual number of marks they got) is converted using a scoring table released by the STA after the tests. This system allows fair comparisons between different years, even if one year’s paper is slightly harder than another.
Expected Standard
Achieved (AS)
(Greater Depth)
Scaled scores in KS2 run from 80 at the lowest end to 120 at the highest. A score of exactly 100 means a child is meeting the standard expected of an 11-year-old finishing primary school. Based on 2025 national results, the average scaled scores across the country were around 105–106 for GPS, 105 for maths, and 106 for reading — so children scoring at 100 are in the mainstream, not struggling.
On their report, parents will see a code alongside the scaled score: AS (achieved expected standard) or NS (not yet at expected standard). Some schools share the raw score too, though this is at the school’s discretion.
The exact mark required to reach a scaled score of 100 changes each year to reflect paper difficulty. In 2025, the approximate marks needed were: Maths — 58 out of 110; Reading — 28 out of 50; GPS — 35 out of 70. These figures give a useful sense of what children are aiming for, but the 2026 thresholds will be set after this year’s papers are marked.
Key Dates: From Tests to Results
Children sit all six papers across four days in their own classrooms.
The STA typically releases the test papers and mark schemes publicly around two weeks after SATs week ends.
Local authority moderators visit selected schools over a three-week window to verify teacher writing assessments.
Schools can view individual children’s results via the NCA tools website. Each child’s raw score, scaled score, and achievement code will be available from this date.
Schools decide how and when to share results with families — most include them in the end-of-year report. If you haven’t heard anything by mid-July, contact the school directly.
School-level results are published by the Department for Education, allowing national and local comparisons.
The secondary school your child is moving to will also be able to access their results, which helps them plan appropriate support from the start of Year 7.
Writing and Science: Teacher Assessments
Because there are no formal written tests for writing or science at KS2, teachers build their assessments from work produced throughout the whole of Year 6. The judgement categories are:
- Pre-key stage — working below the level expected for Year 6
- Working towards the expected standard — making progress but not yet there
- Expected standard — meeting what is expected for a child finishing primary school
- Greater depth — demonstrating a more sophisticated understanding beyond the expected standard
These teacher assessments carry the same weight as the test scores when it comes to the overall picture of a child’s attainment at the end of Key Stage 2.
Access Arrangements and Special Circumstances
Not every child sits the SATs under identical conditions, and schools have a range of options available to ensure the tests are accessible. Arrangements that may be put in place include:
- Extra time for children with specific learning needs
- A scribe to write down answers dictated by the child
- Use of a word processor (without spell-check)
- Rest breaks for children who experience fatigue or have concentration difficulties
- A reader for the maths or GPS papers
- Compensatory marks for children who cannot access the spelling paper due to hearing impairment
Decisions about access arrangements are made by the school in advance, based on a child’s normal working conditions throughout the year. If you think your child may need support, speak to their class teacher or SENCO well before May.
How Parents Can Actually Help
The most important thing a parent can do is keep the atmosphere at home calm and positive. There’s strong evidence that children who feel anxious about SATs perform below their actual ability. The tests are designed to stretch all children — including the most able — so some papers will feel hard. That is expected and normal.
Practically, here’s what makes a real difference in the weeks leading up to SATs:
- Read together for ten minutes each evening — even just asking what a word means builds vocabulary
- Practise times tables during car journeys or the walk to school; arithmetic fluency saves time in Paper 1
- Work through past SATs papers under timed conditions — familiarity with the format removes a lot of anxiety
- Focus revision sessions on short, regular chunks rather than long stressful sittings
- Ask your child what they’ve been doing in class — it signals that learning matters, without the pressure of drilling
- Prioritise sleep in the week before and during SATs week; tiredness affects performance more than most parents realise
- Make sure your child is in school every day in the run-up to May; missed lessons mean missed teaching that teachers can’t easily replace
Past KS2 SATs papers are freely available on the government’s Standards and Testing Agency website. Working through previous papers under timed conditions — then going through the mark scheme together — is the most effective way to build confidence and identify genuine gaps. BBC Bitesize also offers free, well-structured revision content aligned to the national curriculum.
What to Prioritise for Each Subject
Mathematics
Because over half of every maths paper draws on Year 3–5 content, children who have any shaky foundations from earlier years benefit most from going back to basics — fractions, multiplication and division, place value — before tackling Year 6-only topics like algebra and ratio. Year 6 content still makes up the largest slice of questions (typically 37–47%), so it’s not worth ignoring, but plug the gaps from earlier years first.
English Reading
Retrieval and inference questions dominate the paper — together they account for 70–82% of marks across past papers. Children should practise explaining their answers using evidence from the text, rather than giving one-word responses. Vocabulary questions also appear consistently and can be prepared for by reading widely and discussing word meanings.
Grammar, Punctuation & Spelling
The GPS paper tests specific terminology — children need to know the names of word classes and grammatical structures, not just be able to use them. Regular spelling practice, particularly of statutory word lists, pays dividends on Paper 2. For Paper 1, working through mark schemes from past papers is particularly useful because they show exactly how marks are awarded.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do SATs results affect which secondary school my child goes to?
No. Secondary school admissions are based on separate criteria set by each school — typically catchment area, siblings and faith where applicable. SATs results are shared with the receiving secondary school to help them plan teaching, but they play no part in the admissions process.
What happens if my child doesn’t reach the expected standard?
A scaled score below 100 is not a failure. The results highlight where a child may benefit from extra support, and secondary schools use this information to make sure additional help is in place from the start of Year 7. Many children who score below 100 in primary school go on to achieve excellent GCSE results with the right support.
Can my child be withdrawn from SATs?
Headteachers have the discretion to decide whether it is appropriate for a particular pupil to sit the tests — for example, children with significant special educational needs may be assessed under different arrangements. Decisions of this kind are made by the school in consultation with parents.
Are SATs the same as the 11-plus?
No — they are different assessments with different purposes. The 11-plus is a separate entrance test used by selective grammar schools in certain areas of England. KS2 SATs are national curriculum tests taken by all Year 6 children in state-funded schools across England, regardless of the type of secondary school they are moving to.
When will I find out my child’s results?
Schools can access results online from Tuesday 7 July 2026. How and when they share them with parents varies — most include them in the end-of-year report before the summer holidays. If you have not heard anything by mid-July, it is perfectly reasonable to contact your child’s school to ask.
Do children sit science SATs?
There are no formal science papers for all children at KS2. Science is teacher-assessed throughout Year 6. A small number of schools are selected each year to take part in national science sampling tests — these are chosen at random and the results are used for national data, not to assess individual children.
The Bigger Picture
For children, SATs week is one four-day period in their primary school life. It is worth remembering that what is being measured — seven years of learning — cannot be fully captured by a few hours of tests. The assessments give a useful snapshot, but they are only that: a snapshot.
The children who tend to do their best are those who arrive at SATs week feeling prepared without being overwhelmed. Teachers have been working towards this point all year. If you can reinforce that work with calm encouragement, regular reading and a decent amount of sleep, you’ve done everything a parent can do.
The results, when they arrive in July, should be read as useful information about where your child is — not as a verdict on who they are.
