KS2 SATs 2024: areas to prioritise

2024 sees the 3rd set of KS2 SATs papers since the hiatus due to Covid (where we didn’t see any 2020 or 2021 papers). Almost back to normality, you could say – until you consider that this year’s cohort of Year 6s missed a healthy chunk of Year 2 and Year 3 and therefore probably have some fundamental gaps in their learning. (Check here to see if the gaps you’re spotting in your class are common nationwide!) However, onwards we must push… to SATs 2024!

KS2 SATs 2024 - maths past paper analysis and tips

Like previous years, it is still the case that in every set of maths papers so far, over half the content has come from the curricula of Years 3-5. In the most recent SATs, the percentage of content from Years 3-5 was the second highest it’s ever been and yet the pass mark was at its lowest: 51%.

The ‘pass’ mark each year has always been just above 50% (more accurately, between 51-55%); this is worth knowing as we look forward to 2024. Theoretically, based on the pass marks of almost all the previous papers, children should be able to meet the expected standards by almost exclusively knowing content from Years 3-5.

The Calculations topic – also known as the four operations – has consistently been the most common topic to appear across all maths papers, with the next most common being fractions, decimals and percentages (FDP).

It’s worth noting that although there are nine content domains in the KS2 mathematics test framework, they are not all weighted equally. Each content domain has a varying amount of substrands, ranging from 3 in both Geometry (position and direction) and Statistics, to 12 substrands in Fractions, decimals and percentages (where F1 is ‘recognise, find, write, name and count fractions’, up to F12 which is ‘solve problems with percentages’).

Each substrand is then split across various year groups to create different objectives; for example, the aforementioned substrand F1 is divided into four objectives: three in Year 3 (e.g. 3F1a: count up and down in tenths) and one in Year 4 (4F1: count up and down in hundredths). Calculations and FDP, the two weightiest content domains in terms of mark allocation, each have 39 objectives and 40 objectives respectively.

This goes some way to explaining the distribution of marks across the content domains (i.e. the most marks are allocated to these domains because they contain the most content. However, this doesn’t always follow as Measurement, a domain containing 44 objectives, has been allocated under 10% of the total marks for the last three years!).

KS2 SATs 2024 Arithmetic paper

Thinking about the 2024 SATs arithmetic paper… being able to use known facts to solve multiplication and division problems has always been quite popular in the arithmetic papers, so keep that up in your arithmetic sessions. It may also be worth noting that for the last two years, we haven’t seen a question on a mixed number multiplied by an integer – maybe this year?

KS2 SATs 2024 Reasoning papers

As for the reasoning papers, there have been some content domains that haven’t been represented for two years in a row – we could therefore assume that they may be a priority to appear this year. The content domains that haven’t appeared in a reasoning paper since before Covid are:

• Number and place value problems

• Roman numerals

• Scale factors

• Reading scales

• Money

• Volume

• Common shapes

• Patterns in position and direction problems

In theory, children should be able to meet the expected standards by exclusively knowing content from the calculations and FDP content domains. It’s probably safe to assume that the same topics will appear in a similar proportion in 2024.

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If you need to prioritise anything in the run-up to the 2024 SATs tests, use the time to revise these topics rather than worrying too much about whether children can reflect or translate shapes (position and direction – the least represented topic once again) and, as always, nail all the maths curriculum content from Years 3-5 (this will, obviously, also give them a brilliant foundation to any new Year 6 content).

KS2 SATs 2024 - Reading past paper analysis and tips

The majority of the questions in the reading papers have always been retrieval (2b) and inference (2d) – this was still the case in 2023 and so it seems sensible to expect it to be the same in 2024 as well.

In order to achieve the expected standard in reading, the pass mark had been set at 52-56% on the 2017-2019 tests (with the first SATs paper under the new curriculum, 2016, being a bit of an outlier). In 2022, for one of the papers with the fewest amount of words, we had the highest pass mark – this could have been a reflection of its difficulty. However, last year, for one of the papers with the highest amount of words, we had the lowest pass mark (if we excuse 2016).

Up until 2022, we had a steadily increasing pass mark, so last year was a bit of shock. What it has taught us is that we can’t possibly predict what may happen this year!

I’ve said it before (about three times), and I’ll say it again: a poetry extract hasn’t appeared since 2018, so it may be sensible to assume that a poem might be included in the 2024 reading paper. Surely this must be the year!

KS2 SATs 2024 - Grammar past paper analysis and tips

In order to achieve the expected standard in the spelling, punctuation and grammar papers (GPS), the pass mark has previously been, like maths, just over 50% (between 50-54%). Once again, the 2016 test – as the first SATs paper under the new curriculum – was rather an outlier with a pass mark of 61%.

The SPAG assessment consists of a 50-mark question paper and a 20-mark spelling-only test. This structure gives a bit more leeway to strong spellers (which allows for weaknesses in the grammar test. Scoring full marks on the 2022 spelling test meant you only needed 15/50 on the grammar test to still reach the expected standard. Weaker spellers could make up the marks in the grammar test.

The most commonly used content domain in SATs spelling tests is S38: adding suffixes beginning with vowel letters to words of more than one syllable (a Year 3/4 spelling rule). This is followed by S47: endings that sound like /ʃən/, spelt –tion, –sion, –ssion, –cian (also Year 3/4) and S60: words with ‘silent’ letters (a Year 5/6 spelling objective).

The majority of questions in the grammar test have consistently been based on punctuation (G5) and grammatical terms and word classes (G1). So much so that, in every year since 2017, children could have passed the 2023 Grammar paper by answering questions related solely to these two content domains. It seems likely that this pattern will repeat in 2024, so get practising your commas and verbs (alongside all the other punctuation and word classes, of course).

KS2 SATs 2024 - pass / ‘greater depth’ boundaries

On the whole, the ‘grade’ boundaries have stayed relatively similar across the years (disregarding 2016, which has always been a bit of an outlier, being the first set of papers under the new curriculum). The only slightly notable change was last year’s reading paper: the EXS and GDS scores for this dropped for the first time since 2017, where they had previously been steadily increasing.

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