Last year changes to the were made to the Sats for all year 6 students. These new tests came into effect for the summer 2016 and will continue onwards, in both maths and English papers. The new style of SATs tests have been revamped for Key Stages 1 and 2 in order to echo the national curriculum.
During the summer term students take SATs in these subject areas:
- Maths
- Reading
- English grammar, punctuation and spelling
The exams are graded by independent adjudicators and are used to measure many different aspects of education from a child’s development to the school’s performance as a whole. Having SATs tests in year 2 and year 6 offers the ability to measure a student’s progress over a long period of time.
Maths for Key Stage 2 SATs
Three different papers are used during the maths assessment. The first one is arithmetic which is 30 minutes in length, this is followed by 2 more reasoning papers which are 40 minutes per paper.
The arithmetic paper is made up of fixed response questions in which children must offer the correct answer. Skills required include equations, long multiplication and division. The 2 reasoning papers have a selection of questions which measure a student’s ability to comprehend what they have learnt. These may include multiple choice, true or false, constrained questions (answering in a specific way with a chart or diagram for example), and less constrained open questions (explaining how the answer was solved).
English for Key Stage 2 SATs
The reading paper is 1 hour long in total with 3 pieces of text to analyse. After the reading time that is included in the hour there will be a number of different questions designed to evaluate a student’s understanding of what he or she has read.
Ranking, labelling, find and copy, short response and open ended answer questions will all be included in the paper.
Grammar, punctuation and spelling for Key Stage 2 SATs
There are 2 different stages to the Key Stage 2 grammar, spelling and punctuation SATs. The first paper totalling 45 minutes will consist of 2 question types.
The first is selected response, in which the student must identify different sentence parts such as verbs, nouns or adjectives. The second question type is constructed response, where the student may have to explain an error or correct a sentence.
There is also a 20 minute aural spelling test that includes 20 different words to spell.
Key Stage 2 SATs test dates 2017
The Key Stage 2 SATs test are scheduled to take place on specific dates for all students across the country. In 2017 they will take place in early May, starting on Monday 8th May 2017.
Monday 8th May – English reading and Paper 1 English grammar, punctuation and spelling
Tuesday 9th May – Paper 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling and paper 1 maths arithmetic
Wednesday 10th May – Paper 1 maths reasoning
Thursday 11th May – Paper 2 maths reasoning
Key Stage 2 SATs marking
New marking systems have been put in place of the old national curriculum levels, giving children raw and scaled scores. The raw score is the total number of marks that a student has gained and the sledge score is used to interpret whether a child has attained the expected standard decided by the Department of Education. The scaled scores can range from 80 (lowest) to 120 (highest). The expected standard for every child is 100 on each test.
Find past papers on the link below: