As a student or parent, you will probably have heard of the SATs before, but you may not know much about them beyond being exams at the end of primary school. Primary schools and secondary schools in England will usually place a lot of emphasis on the SATs as important exams for students and schools alike – but how important actually are the Year 6 SATs?
The Year 6 SATs are important to several people and institutions: students, parents, primary schools, secondary schools, and Ofsted, as a few examples. SATs are important to students and parents as a means of understanding a student’s academic ability. SATs are important to primary schools in order to assess how effective their teaching is. SATs are important to secondary schools for understanding how to streamline and support students before they arrive.
In this article, I’ll be covering what Year 6 SATs are, when they are held, who they’re important for and why they’re important – make sure to read for everything you need to know!
Table of Contents
Are Year 6 SATs important?
The national curriculum tests (also known as SATs) are standardised assessments that are compulsory in schools in England, taken by students in their final year of primary school (Year 6).
It is required by the government that all state-funded primary schools administer the SATs. Although it is not compulsory for private schools. You can read more about this issue in this Think Student article.
The SATs are designed to test a student’s cognitive and academic abilities to make sure that their school has taught them well enough to progress to secondary school.
SATs scores are used by both primary and secondary schools. Primary schools use results to maintain/improve the standard of teaching. Secondary schools use results to understand how to support students before they arrive.
What is involved in Year 6 SAT exams?
There are four papers for the SATs: reading, grammar punctuation and spelling, and three maths papers.
These are all designed to test the variety of a student’s knowledge and make sure they are academically developed across a wide scope of subjects.
The reading SATs is one paper with questions based off of a passage of text given in the exam. This exam is to test a student’s reading comprehension and lasts for 1 hour.
The grammar, punctuation and spelling SATs exam is split into two parts. There is a written paper for grammar and punctuation which lasts for 45 minutes, and an aural 20-word spelling test, which lasts for 15-20 minutes. These papers are designed to test a student’s literacy skills.
The first maths SATs is a 30-minute paper that tests a student’s arithmetic skills. The second and third maths SATs are two 40-minute-long papers. These include reasoning-based and multiple-choice questions, which are designed to test a student’s reasoning skills.
These are all considered key areas that students need to understand in order to progress to secondary school.
For further information about why SATs are important and what’s involved in them, have a look at this Think Student article.
What are Year 6 SATs used for?
The national curriculum tests (SATs) are used by several different institutions and people. They are used by parents, but also by primary and secondary schools.
SATs are used by parents because it helps to make sure that their child or children are at their expected levels for literacy and numeracy and are not falling behind in either category.
SATs are also used by secondary schools, in order to gauge how to streamline students into sets ahead of their arrival at secondary school.
Since secondary school sets will affect how a student is taught and what they are taught, SATs are important in deciding which set is best for a student.
However, SATs are also used by a lot of primary schools, because the results prove that they are meeting the standards of education for their students.
SATs results are also used as part of Ofsted inspections for primary school.
How important are Year 6 SATs for secondary school?
SATs are quite important for secondary schools. As mentioned above, SATs scores allow secondary schools to gauge the abilities of their students before they arrive.
Schools can use this information to streamline their students into sets (if the secondary school uses sets, which not all schools do).
However, outside of streamlining students and knowing their academic ability before they begin learning, SATs scores don’t matter that much, so don’t worry if you don’t achieve a great score.
It is quite likely that secondary schools will also hold their own tests in Year 7 to help streamline students. Meaning that even if a student doesn’t perform particularly well in the SATs, they have an opportunity to achieve more later on.
Secondary schools will not deny a student a place based on their SATs scores.
Although SATs scores are certainly important for secondary schools, they are only important in the sense that they help secondary schools get an idea of how to better support their students.
SATs scores are not that important for secondary schools when it comes to things such as how the student may perform at that school. SATs scores reflect the teaching of the primary school the student came from.
How important are Year 6 SATs for GCSE predicted grades?
This is definitely a complicated question, the answer to which is that SATs grades are important for predicted grades — but also not really.
Will SATs grades be taken into account when calculating a student’s predicted grades? Yes, they probably will.
However, the weight they’re given in calculating predicted grades will be quite small, compared to other factors, such as a student’s progress from Year 7 to Year 11.
If a student didn’t achieve particularly good SATs results, but made excellent progress throughout secondary school, their GCSE predicted grades will still probably be relatively high.
For further information on how predicted grades are calculated, check out this Think Student article.
SATs have a larger weighting in target grades, which, although similar to predicted grades, are slightly different.
Secondary schools will give students target grades every year up to Year 11 (which is when they’ll switch to predicted grades). These target grades are first set using a student’s SATs results.
Therefore, SATs results are much more important in generating target grades than they are GCSE predicted grades.
As mentioned previously, SATs results will still play a part in generating GCSE predicted grades, but they will not be the sole factor, so don’t worry.
What happens if you fail Year 6 SATs?
Thankfully, even if a student doesn’t perform particularly well on their national curriculum tests, there are no significant consequences.
If a student does not meet the expected standard for the SATs, they will not be required to resit the exams, nor are they considered to have ‘failed’ the SATs.
Once the results are shared with the student’s secondary school, the school can then decide if they think it would benefit the student to put extra measures in place to help them.
This is the only real consequence of not meeting the expected standard of the SATs; the student’s secondary school may feel that the student needs extra support.
For example, this could mean placing the student in a lower set or changing the way a student would be streamlined.
SATs are designed to demonstrate ability, so there is no real ‘downside’ to not achieving as high a score as other students.
If a primary school has a significant proportion of its students not meeting the expected standard for the SATs, then it may also be assessed for how well it supports students up to their exams.
For further information about this, check out this article by The School Run.
When are Year 6 SATs?
The SATs are held at different times every year but are typically held around early to mid-May.
They are held at the end of a student’s last year of primary school (Year 6), to show a student’s progress over the longest period of time possible, and to prepare students for secondary school.
I’d recommend checking out this Think Student article for a general overview of when the Year 6 SATs are held.
Primary schools will usually inform students and parents alike of when the SATs will take place months in advance.
For further information on the dates of the Year 6 SATs, check out this page of the government website.
Year 6 SATs have huge importance as they are crucial examples in a student’s academic journey. considering their abilities in key subjects before upgrading to secondary education. These tests are not only for academic progress but also allow guidance overall primary education system.