• Corbyn: Labour will scrap SATs

    Labour will scrap SATs and abolish the new reception baseline test, Jeremy Corbyn has announced. The opposition leader told the annual conference of the National Education Union today that his party will end the “regime of extreme pressure testing” if it wins power. Labour intends to introduce a “more flexible and practical” primary assessment system…

    16.20 Apr. 16th, 2019 | News

  • E-ACT primary school has SATs results cancelled for reading and maths

    Year 6 pupils at a primary academy in Birmingham run by the chain E-ACT will not receive scores for their reading and maths SATs, after the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) found “doubt over the accuracy or correctness” of the results. The STA has been examining how the tests were managed at Nechells Primary E-ACT…

    12.00 Aug. 23rd, 2018 | News

  • Cheating at key stage 2 SATs: what does it mean for secondary schools?

    What if the reason a secondary school had a poor progress rate was not due to its own teaching, but because the pupils arrived with overinflated results from primary school? Researchers at the number-crunching powerhouse Education Datalab believe this theory holds true, after they looked at secondary schools that took pupils from 30 different primary…

    5.00 Apr. 20th, 2018 | Opinion

  • Don't boycott SATs, heads tell parents

    Headteachers have warned parents not to take part in a planned boycott of this year’s SATs. The campaign group Let Our Kids Be Kids is gearing up for a boycott of key stage 2 SATs, which begin in primary schools in mid-May. The group has even published a template for a withdrawal letter for parents of…

    15.47 Apr. 16th, 2018 | News

  • NFER to deliver reception baseline test

    The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has been chosen to deliver the controversial new baseline test for reception children, which will be rolled out to all schools by the end of 2020. The reintroduction of the test was announced by former education secretary Justine Greening in September last year, despite a previous pilot of baseline…

    10.19 Apr. 11th, 2018 | News

  • Ofsted: More challenging KS2 SATs are leaving poorer pupils behind

    Harder key stage 2 SATs have resulted in a wider attainment gap between children on free meals and their peers, Ofsted has said. In the watchdog’s annual report, released today, key stage 2 SATs are directly blamed for widening results in reading, writing and maths. Ofsted notes the “more demanding key stage 2 SATs and…

    10.40 Dec. 13th, 2017 | News

  • The four key trends in the 2017 KS2 primary test results

    Provisional results of the primary school key stage 2 SATs tests broken down at local authority and regional level have been released by the Department for Education this morning. Here are the key points from today’s new data. 1. London scoops the top results again London dominates local authority areas in terms of pupils who…

    10.55 Aug. 31st, 2017 | News

  • Scaled scores for 2017 key stage 2 SATs announced

    Note (added July 10 2018): Here are the 2018 scaled scores for key stage 2 SATs. The Department for Education has today released the marks pupils needed for the 2017 key stage 2 tests to achieve the government’s “expected” score. The pdf document can be viewed below or downloaded directly from the Department for Education. To meet…

    8.56 Jul. 4th, 2017 | News

  • Three-quarters of primary leaders lack confidence in SATs, survey finds

    Three in four school leaders lack confidence in SATs, while half report having received inadequate information to prepare pupils for this year’s key stage 2 tests, a survey has revealed. A poll of more than 1,000 primary school leaders by The Key reveals that 77 per cent “do not have confidence” in the current national assessment system.…

    11.00 May. 8th, 2017 | News

  • Government makes SATs an easier ride after 'fiasco' last year

    The government has simplified questions in this year’s primary SATs after reports that last year’s tests left pupils in tears. Schools Week has learnt that the Standards and Testing Agency has made the questions early on in this year’s tests for 10 and 11-year-olds slightly easier. The agency has also assessed the structure of the…

    5.00 Apr. 7th, 2017 | News

  • How to prepare year 6 for KS2 maths SATs

    Education blogger @thatboycanteach explains what we can learn from studying the 2016 Key Stage 2 SATs results After the release of RAISEonline’s QLA data, teachers, Maths coordinators, and SLT alike will have scrambled to analyse the initial report on 2016s maths SATs results. It’s a resource with huge potential, offering ways for us to reconsider the effectiveness…

    12.00 Feb. 24th, 2017 | Opinion