If your child is approaching Year 2 or Year 6, you have probably already noticed a shift in the atmosphere at school — more practice papers, more talk of "the tests", and perhaps a child who is starting to feel the pressure. It is completely natural to feel anxious yourself, and to wonder whether you are doing enough to support them. Before anything else, it is worth saying this honestly: SATs are not the defining moment of your child's education. They are a snapshot, taken at a specific point in time, and they measure where a child is right now — not where they are heading. That said, understanding what SATs actually involve, and where children tend to find them difficult, can make a real difference to how well-prepared and how calm your child feels on the day.
SATs — Standard Assessment Tests — are national assessments taken by children in state schools in England at the end of Key Stage 1 (Year 2) and Key Stage 2 (Year 6). They are set and marked externally by the Standards and Testing Agency, a government body, and they assess how well children have met the expectations of the national curriculum at each stage.
It is worth understanding why schools take SATs seriously. Schools use SATs data for their own self-evaluation and, crucially, it feeds into Ofsted inspections. This is why some schools place considerable emphasis on preparation — the results reflect on the school as much as on the individual child. Knowing this can help parents put the pressure in context: some of the urgency comes from institutional accountability, not just from your child's individual needs.
Results are reported using a scaled score system that runs from 80 to 120. A score of 100 represents the expected standard. A child scoring above 100 is working above the expected level; below 100 suggests they have not yet met it. This scaling means that raw marks are converted to allow fair comparison across different test years.
The two stages of SATs are quite different in weight and format, and it helps to understand each one clearly.
KS1 SATs, taken in Year 2, cover Reading and Maths. However, teacher assessment also contributes significantly to the overall picture at this stage — your child's class teacher will be forming a judgement based on their work throughout the year, not just on a single test. KS1 SATs are intended to be low-stakes and are often administered informally within the classroom. Many children do not even realise they are sitting a formal assessment.
KS2 SATs, taken in Year 6, are more structured. They include papers in Reading, Grammar Punctuation and Spelling (GPS), and Maths. Writing at KS2 is assessed by teachers rather than through a separate exam paper — a detail many parents are surprised to learn. KS2 SATs take place in May of Year 6, typically across three days. The results follow children into secondary school, where they are commonly used to set teaching groups in Year 7. They are not a pass or fail — but they do carry real, practical consequences for how your child is placed when they start secondary school.
Understanding where marks are most often lost helps to focus preparation where it will have the greatest effect. Common areas of difficulty include:
One thing that genuinely surprises many parents is how much the GPS paper tests specific grammatical vocabulary. A child can write beautifully and still find this paper difficult, because it asks them to name and identify features of language rather than simply use them. This is a learnable skill — but it does need deliberate practice.
Good SATs preparation is not about drilling past papers until a child is exhausted. It is about identifying the specific gaps that are holding a child back, building genuine understanding in those areas, and then — and only then — practising applying that understanding under realistic conditions.
A skilled tutor will begin by working out exactly where a child is losing marks. This is often more targeted than what a busy classroom teacher can offer, simply because one-to-one time allows for a much closer look at how a child is thinking. A child who keeps getting inference questions wrong may not need more reading — they may need to be taught a reliable method for approaching those questions. A child who struggles with reasoning in Maths may have a gap in one specific area of number that is undermining their confidence across the whole paper.
Equally important is the emotional side of preparation. Children who feel anxious about tests often underperform relative to their actual ability. A good tutor helps a child feel genuinely capable — not by offering false reassurance, but by making sure they have real skills to draw on. Confidence that is built on solid foundations holds up under pressure in a way that encouragement alone cannot provide.
Do SATs results affect which secondary school my child goes to?
SATs results do not determine secondary school admissions — that process is handled separately through your local authority. However, KS2 SATs results are routinely shared with secondary schools and are widely used to place children into teaching groups or sets in Year 7. A strong set of results can mean your child starts secondary school in a group that moves at a pace that suits them, so while SATs are not a pass or fail, they are not without consequence either.
My child is very anxious about the tests — how can I help without making things worse?
The most helpful thing you can do is to be honest that the tests matter a little, but not enormously — and to mean it. Children pick up on parental anxiety very quickly. Alongside that, structured preparation genuinely reduces anxiety, because it replaces vague worry with specific knowledge. A child who knows how to approach an inference question, and has practised doing so, feels far less frightened by it than one who has simply been told not to worry.
What does a scaled score of 100 actually mean?
The scaled score of 100 represents the expected standard for a child at the end of Year 6. It does not mean 100 out of 100 — it is a converted score designed to allow fair comparison across different test years, since the difficulty of papers varies slightly from year to year. A score between 100 and 120 indicates above-expected attainment; a score below 100 suggests a child has not yet met the expected standard. Most children score somewhere in the range of 95 to 110.
When should we start preparing for SATs?
For KS2 SATs, starting in the autumn term of Year 6 gives a comfortable amount of time to identify gaps and address them without pressure. Starting in January of Year 6 is still very worthwhile. Beginning earlier — in Year 5 — can be valuable if a child has specific weaknesses in core areas, but intensive test preparation that early is rarely necessary. For KS1 SATs, the focus is better placed on building strong foundations in reading and number rather than on test practice specifically.
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