KS2 SATs 2023: maths papers breakdown

SATs is hopefully a slightly distant memory and we have another blog from the always fantastic, and sometimes sarcastic, Sophie Bartlett! This time, we’re in the realm of the maths papers. Brace yourself for another candid assessment that sheds light on the finer detail of the maths papers from SATs 2023.

Here we go again! Back at crunching numbers, but this time for the maths papers (admittedly my favourite ones to analyse as there is SO much to get stuck into).

Content of the maths papers 2023

This year’s reasoning papers have been amongst the least “wordy” (as in, frequency of words) so far.

It certainly isn’t the case that the less “wordy” a paper is, the easier it is, as we will see below. Whilst it could be argued that the children have more time to complete the questions (as they have fewer words to read), the complexity of the maths required this year certainly balances it out.

Past predictions vs reality

In December, we made some basic predictions about this year’s maths papers:

Prediction: 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 2023.

We saw two large hikes in the proportion of calculations questions, firstly from 2017 to 2018 (a 7% increase) and then again from 2019 to 2020 (another 8% increase). In fact, this amount has increased every year until now: for the first time, we’ve seen a drop in representation of the calculations content domain, albeit only by 2%.

The percentage of FDP questions also largely increased from 2018 to 2019 – a 10% jump! Ever since, it has remained at around one quarter of the paper, with this year’s being the highest so far: 26% of the questions were based on fractions, decimals and percentages.

The combined total of these two content domains has previously steadily risen from 32% in 2016, to 36% in 2017, 43% in 2018, 54% in 2019 and finally to 63% in 2022. This year it fell again slightly to 62% - however, this still represents the majority of the maths paper.

Although the papers are still weighted towards Year 6 maths content, in previous years, we have seen it be possible to ‘pass’ – or almost pass – without knowing the Year 6 maths curriculum at all.

Note: we'll update whether the same can be said for this year once we have the raw scores. So keep your eyes peeled.

Whilst Year 6 content dropped by 10% in 2022 compared to the previous paper in 2019, it has risen again slightly this year at 40%.

What about next year?

Keep drilling the four operations, and fractions, decimals and percentages – you can pretty much guarantee that these topics will make up the majority of any future set of SATs papers. 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).

Our favourite paper – the arithmetic!

Well I’m not sure about you, but it's certainly my favourite! There were two particular areas noticeably missing from the 2022 arithmetic paper: multiplying a fraction by a fraction and multiplying a mixed number by an integer.

This year, we got our fraction multiplication but still nothing for a mixed number! (Cue a huge sigh of relief for all Year 6 teachers – multiplying a mixed number by an integer is, in my opinion, one of the trickiest concepts to teach. I still get nightmares about 2018’s calculating the length of a day on Mercury…)

Next year's paper?

Being able to use known facts to solve multiplication and division problems has always been quite popular in these papers, so keep that up in your arithmetic sessions. And surely we’ve finally got to see a mixed number multiplied by an integer, right? Although I did say we’d see poetry in the reading paper this year and look where that got me…

What about the reasoning papers?

According to the listed content domains in the mark scheme, the following areas were missing from last year’s papers. Let’s see if they appeared in this year’s…

There were some notable areas missing this year – but did they appear in last year’s papers?

Reasoning paper predictions

Logically, you’d assume that if a content domain hasn’t been represented for two years in a row, it may be a priority to appear, right…?! If this is the case, I’d look out for…

• Number and place value problems

• Roman numerals

• Scale factors

• Reading scales

• Money

• Volume

• Common shapes

• Patterns in position and direction problems

What did the community say?

There were some mixed opinions on the arithmetic paper.

This is the first time we’ve ever seen a division question have a remainder in the arithmetic paper!

There was also some controversy over the amount of complicated questions worth only one mark.

Generally, multi-step questions are worth more multiple marks, with the opportunity to award one or two ‘method marks’. See some examples below of questions this year which could be considered ‘multi-step’, despite their worth of just one mark.

For only one mark, this question requires children to:

• Know that a regular hexagon has six equal sides and equal interior angles

• Know the symbol for a right angle and understand its meaning

• Infer that the point at which the two triangles meet is the centre of the hexagon

• Recognise that the large triangle is an equilateral triangle, which is 1/6 of the hexagon

• Know that if the large triangle is double the area of the small triangle, the small triangle must be 1/12 of the hexagon

• Be able to add 1/6 and 1/12

… all for just one mark!

Again, for a single mark, the children need to:

• Understand how to read a pie chart

• Know that percentages add to 100

• Be able to add and subtract within 100

• Find a percentage of an amount

Until results day…

And that’s it for another year! We’re saying goodbye to Chen (albeit the female version this year) until 2024. Now’s the time to focus on getting the children ready for secondary school: so before you swap ratio for rounders, percentages for play practice and shapes for shirt signing, let’s make sure they definitely CAN do all their times tables before they enter Year 7.

Learning by Questions has lots of resources aimed specifically at transition for year 6s - as well as times table drills. You can trial them for free for 6 weeks.

If you missed my analysis of the 2023 English papers, make sure to check that out too.

Results are released on the 11th July, so we’ll see you again then for a look at the national picture of attainment – and, of course, another analysis!