Year 6 SATs, and what the score actually means
Year 6 SATs, and what the score actually means
The short version
- Three subjects tested: spelling and grammar, reading, and maths. Four days in May.
- The score is not a percentage. It is a scaled score between 80 and 120, and 100 is the expected standard.
- Writing and science are not tested. The teacher judges those.
What are SATs?
At the end of Year 6, children take national tests. Officially they are the key stage 2 national curriculum tests. Everyone calls them SATs.
There are tests in three subjects:
- English grammar, punctuation and spelling
- English reading
- Maths
For the 2025 to 2026 school year they run from Monday 11 May to Thursday 14 May 2026:
| Day | Subject |
|---|---|
| Monday 11 May | Grammar, punctuation and spelling — two papers, one of them a spelling test |
| Tuesday 12 May | Reading |
| Wednesday 13 May | Maths — arithmetic, then a reasoning paper |
| Thursday 14 May | Maths — a second reasoning paper |
⚠️ Those dates are for 2026 only. They change every year and your school will confirm them.
If your child is ill on a test day, they may be able to sit that paper up to five school days later. The school has to apply for permission. So a bug in May is not a disaster.
What about writing and science?
They are not tested. Your child's teacher judges them instead, based on the work your child has done all year.
For writing, the judgement is one of three things: working towards the expected standard, working at the expected standard, or working at greater depth within the expected standard.
For science, it is one of two: has not met the expected standard, or is working at the expected standard.
Writing judgements are sometimes checked by the local authority, to keep schools consistent with each other.
What does the score mean?
Your child's result is a scaled score. It is worked out from the marks they got, but it is not the marks and it is not a percentage.
The range is 80 to 120.
- 100 or more means your child is working at, or above, the expected standard.
- Below 100 means they may need more support to reach it.
That is it. There is no A to E, no pass or fail, no grade.
Scaled scores exist so that school performance can be compared accurately over time. Some years the papers are slightly harder, so the marks needed for 100 shift a little. The scaled score irons that out.
That is the government's stated reason, and it is worth noticing what it is about: comparing years, not ranking children.
When do we find out?
Schools can see the results online from Thursday 16 July 2026.
Your school decides how it tells you, but you should have the results before the end of the summer term. They come as part of an annual report covering your child's whole year — strengths, progress and achievements, not just the test scores.
The report should also let you see how your child did compared with other Year 6 children in the school and across England.
The school will talk to you about your child's performance before the summer holidays, and you can ask questions then. Use that.
Your child's new secondary school will also see the results. That is deliberate — it helps them work out who needs support in September.
Are the results published?
Not your child's. Individual results are not published by the school or by the government.
What is published is the school's figures. The results are added up to produce school-level attainment and progress measures, which appear on the government's Compare School and College Performance service.
That is worth knowing, because it explains a lot. Some of the pressure your child feels in Year 6 is not about them. It is about the school being measured.
What if my child does not take the tests?
There are several reasons a headteacher may decide the tests are not appropriate, including if a child:
- has not covered the relevant Year 6 curriculum
- is working below the standard of the national curriculum, and is assessed a different way
- is working at the right standard but cannot take the tests, even with adjustments
- is not in a fit physical or mental state at the time
Children working below the standard are assessed under a different system, and their report will describe their achievements and progress through that instead. The school will tell you if this applies.
Should we buy revision books?
Sometimes. Not always. Two honest points first.
One: ask the school what they want. Most Year 6 classes do a lot of preparation, and many schools send home exactly what they would like your child to do. Buying a different scheme on top can mean your child does double the work with no extra benefit.
Two: no child needs bought books to reach the expected standard. The tests are on what has been taught. A child who has been in school and paying attention has met the material.
Where revision books genuinely help is with familiarity — a child who has seen the layout of an arithmetic paper is not spending the first five minutes working out what to do. That is a real advantage and it is a small one.
If you buy anything, a past-paper pack is usually more useful than a revision guide, for that reason.
How to handle it at home
Keep the routine. Sleep and breakfast do more for a test week than an extra hour of revision.
Little and often, if at all. Twenty minutes is enough. A child doing an hour of maths on a Sunday in May is not learning much.
Talk about the school, not the child. "These tests are partly about how the school is doing" is true, and it takes weight off a ten-year-old.
Do not promise a reward for a score. A scaled score is not fully in your child's control. Reward the work if you want to reward something.
Say out loud that it does not decide anything. Because it does not. It does not choose their secondary school, or set them for life. It tells their next teachers where to start.
What our games are and are not for
Crumb Tables is worth a few minutes because arithmetic fluency saves time in the maths papers. Crumbword and Crumb Crossword work on spelling and vocabulary.
Neither is revision, and we are not going to pretend they are. They are five useful minutes on a day when nobody can face a practice paper.
Where this comes from
- 2026 key stage 2 national curriculum tests: information for parents, Standards and Testing Agency, Crown copyright 2025 — for the subjects, the 11 to 14 May 2026 dates, the five-day variation for absence, and the 16 July results date.
- Assessment results at the end of key stage 2: information for parents, Standards and Testing Agency, Crown copyright 2025 — for the scaled score range of 80 to 120, what 100 means, the writing and science judgements, and what is and is not published.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
About us
And who we are: CrumbJar is a British puzzle-games studio. We make daily word and number games that children and adults play on a screen, and the games are free. So we have an interest in you thinking well of screens, and an interest in you buying things through our links. We would rather you knew that than found out.