The number of marks a child receives in each test is compared against other children taking the test that year. This creates a scaled score that schools and the government use to understand how the pupils in each school are getting on.

The total number of marks a pupil scores in a test (their ‘raw’ score) is converted into a scaled score to let pupils’ performances be compared over time and across schools.

This scaled score is also helpful as it can be used to show the difficulty of each SATs paper. If a paper is particularly tricky, their standardised score will take account of this.

A child’s SATs results can be used to see whether pupils they’ve met the national expectation in maths, reading and GPS (grammar, punctuation and spelling).

Children earn a scaled score from 80-120 in each test. This shows where they’re working in relation to the national curriculum expectations:

• A scaled score between 80 and 100 means that a child is working towards the national expectation
• A scaled score of 100 means that a child has met the national expectation
• A scaled score of 110 or above is classed as working at a higher standard

Children receive a separate score for each topic. This means they may meet the national expectation in some subjects and not in others.

By meeting or exceeding the national expectation in a subject, a child is working at or above the expected level. This means they’re in the best possible position to meet the expectations when they move up to secondary school.

If a child hasn’t met the national expectation, this will be highlighted to their secondary school so they can offer help and support to ensure they’re keeping up with content in lessons. They may also offer further support depending on their student support services.

Teachers will also have an in-depth plan to prepare their classes for the assessments in May, and will keep you up-to-date with your child’s progress.

If you have any questions, be sure to chat to your child’s teacher about how you can best support them at home.

Using DoodleMaths and DoodleEnglish for a few minutes a day is another great way to help your child prepare for SATs.

By creating your child a personalised work programme, they’ll automatically target the topics your child is finding challenging and consolidate what they know, helping them to get back on track ahead of the tests.

And best of all, you can try it for free!

Results from the Year 6 SATs are shared with parents and the government once the papers have been marked in July.

Parents usually don’t receive the results of the KS1 SATs. For KS2, you’ll be told what your child will likely score. However, you can ask your school for more information.

• As well as having a good understanding of arithmetic, children should also have a range of calculation strategies up their sleeve. Estimation and using inverse operations are a great way to check their answers.
• Encourage your child to always show their workings out. This will make it easier to find any mistakes they may have made in their calculations, and questions worth more than one mark often give a point for correct workings out, even if the answer is wrong.
• Towards the end of the paper, children will receive questions that award marks based on the explanations they can give about why an answer is correct or incorrect. Encouraging your child to explain their answers is a great way to prepare for the tests.

For even more tips, be sure to check out our blog on how to help your child prepare for SATs!