KS2 SATs 2024: Analysing the nation's strengths and knowledge gaps

As we near the end of Spring term 2, and ever closer to SATs '24, it seems like the perfect time to shed some light on what's happening with our Year 6s right now.

Where are they winning, and where are they hitting a bit of a roadblock?

If you're new to all this, we're about to take a deep dive into what has proven to be the five strongest and most problematic maths and GPS SATs content domains this Spring Term.

Long-time LbQ SATs contributor, Sophie Bartlett, also shares her thoughts on these insights.

Where the data comes from

This data is the result of authentic responses from pupils using LbQ's SATs Springboard diagnostic assessments to prepare for SATs '24.

We received around 2 million pupil answers during spring term, with each assessment designed to mirror the structure and content weighting of past SATs papers.

KS2 GPS SATs Diagnostic Assessments Spring 2024

Thousands of pupils have now answered questions from the GPS Springboards 4, 5 and 6, so we can now update you with their progress and some new areas of difficulty that are appearing.

5 strongest GPS SATs content domains

Despite the questions gradually getting harder throughout the GPS SATs Springboard, much foundational knowledge from earlier in the curriculum remains secure for most pupils. This is very encouraging.

5 most problematic GPS SATs content domains

A difficult question about pronouns (see below) tops the problematic list with only 33% of pupils correctly replacing the phrase with the pronoun 'it'. However, the most common misconception for this question was to enter the incorrect pronoun 'her' (this misconception does at least show some knowledge of pronouns!).

This misconception is possibly a result of not reading the question carefully enough and assuming it was a case of identifying a pronoun instead of using a pronoun for cohesion between sentences.

The adverbials question below required pupils to type in both of the words that make up an adverbial, and only 36% of pupils did so correctly the first time. In addition to a wide variety of misspellings, 22% of pupils only entered one of the words of the adverbial rather than both of them. Helping pupils identify adverbials of varying length and also emphasising the need to spell accurately would help with future questions like this one.

Those tricky apostrophes for plural possession are still in the top 5 problematic questions, but there is some good news! 39% of pupils correctly answered the possessive plural question correctly in GPS5 (see below), which is a 14% improvement from only 25% on an earlier diagnostic.

Sophie's thoughts on the 2024 SATs Springboard GPS data:

Similarly to last time, three of the five ‘most problematic’ content domains are related to G1: grammatical terms/word classes - in this case, pronouns, adverbials and determiners. Previously, this was relative pronouns, determiners and prepositions. Determiners seem to remain a tricky concept!

Basic punctuation appears again amongst the strongest content domains - question marks and capital letters this time, compared to question marks and full stops last time. It’s pleasing to see subordinating conjunctions up there too, as I often feel this is something that can easily trip children up.

It’s interesting to see that copying spelling incorrectly caught a lot of children out on Q13. It’s so frustrating to see children lose marks in the grammar test for errors that aren’t to do with their understanding of the grammatical concept being tested, e.g. not ‘correctly punctuating’ (using a capital and full stop) the sentence when converting from active to passive or vice versa!

Related content

SATs 2024: areas to prioritise

10 common maths mistakes seen on SATs papers

SATs '24: last-minute revision tips and techniques

KS2 Maths SATs Diagnostic Assessments Spring 2024

Now let’s take a look at how this year’s Y6 cohort are doing on the next set of maths diagnostic assessments as part of the SATs Springboard: Springboards M4, M5 and M6. There is much more Y6 content in these diagnostics, but they still revisit topics from earlier in the curriculum.

5 strongest maths SATs content domains

It’s good to see that some of the strongest content domains have generally been in the topics that appear in the greatest proportion on SATs papers (Calculations, Number and Place Value and Fractions).

Granted, these are all objectives from Y3/4 domains, but they indicate that fundamental knowledge in these important topics is now generally secure and pupils are ready to build on this going forwards.

Let’s hope to see more Y5/6 domains up there in the strongest domains during the course of the summer term…

5 most problematic maths SATs content domains

(not including greater depth, multi-step or multi-domain questions)

Some very interesting ones here, in particular the one at the top of the table, and we’ll take a look at this question in more detail in a moment. The remainder of the most problematic domains come from topics which are tested (and often taught) less frequently, so there are probably no huge surprises here for Y6 teachers.

However, there are some important objectives which undoubtedly we would want all Y6 pupils to be secure in by the time they leave primary school, regardless of whether or not they appear on SATs papers.

Let’s take a quick look at a couple of these in a bit more detail.

The most problematic question was this one:

Only 21.4% of Y6 pupils got this right at the first attempt, even though the key term ‘consecutive’ is explained. This is likely more of an issue of pupils lacking sufficient problem-solving strategies rather than not being able to divide 90 by 3 as a starting point. This question does the one thing that so often throws pupils in a test situation: a requirement to use simple maths but in an unfamiliar way.

The top incorrect answer here was 30, which has been given by 19.4% of all pupils. Again, this indicates that the first basic calculation (90 ÷ 3) itself is secure, but applying other information given in the question is the main issue.

The second most common wrong answer was 20 which was given by 9.1% of pupils. Here, pupils have the misconception that 20, 30 and 40 are consecutive numbers.

The only Y3/4 objective to make the ‘most problematic’ list from these diagnostics was 'Convert time from analogue to digital 24-hour clocks'.

Although this is again in context, it should be familiar to Y6 pupils. However, only 36.4% of pupils answered correctly first time.

There have been many different wrong answers given, but the top incorrect answer during spring term was 3:25, with 03:25 in second place. Both of these answers show an awareness of the 24-hour clock format, but it hasn’t occurred to pupils that 03:25 represents a time that’s very early in the morning, so isn’t a feasible answer for the context of the question. The image and the bolding in the question itself both further reinforce the fact that the clock time shown is definitely in the afternoon.

Overall average scores (out of 20)

The overall mean on each diagnostic has generally been quite close to 12, meaning that pupils typically have around 8 skills gaps to address each time. The fourth and fifth diagnostics both saw the mean score increase. However, Springboard M6 saw a decrease in the median and mode scores, bringing the mean score down too. Springboard M6 does contain more content from Y5/6 objectives, so it suggests that most pupils currently have more gaps from the Y5/6 curriculum.

All of these pupils will have had further mastery and practice sets recommended for them in these areas, allowing them to build confidence from pictorial support in initial questions right through to being exposed to challenging reasoning and problem solving questions.

It will be interesting to see whether the averages improve during the summer term, once the entire curriculum has been taught thoroughly in the majority of schools and pupils have had the opportunity to revisit these tricky - and often new - areas of learning.

Sophie's thoughts on the 2024 SATs Springboard maths data:

I think it’s quite telling that there are gaps showing in the Y5/6 curriculum. Many Y6 teachers I’ve spoken to are, like me, much further behind in the curriculum this year than they would have been in previous years. I’ve personally spent more time than ever plugging gaps from Years 3-5 – and that’s not at all a slight to the rest of KS2 but purely a reflection on the damage that Covid has done!

Last time, three of the five ‘most problematic’ content domains were fractions, and yet this time, fractions don't appear once! I’m assuming that most teachers have taught most, if not all, of their fraction units now, which may explain this.

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