Y6 SATs 2025 spelling test predictions for last-minute prep

The queen of SATs analysis, Sophie Bartlett, shares her predictions for the SATs 2025 spelling test. She breaks down the trends of past spelling papers, with guidance on key content domains to inform your last-minute practice (and even some fun non-rule-abiding word predictions!)

The spelling test is probably – let’s face it – the most forgettable SATs paper of them all. I think most of us get to a point where we resign ourselves to the fact that, at this point, the children will either be able to spell the words or not. There is very little point in learning random spelling rules now! However, if you do have any time to squeeze in a bit of spelling revision, we can point you in the right direction…

How is the spelling paper described by the framework?

The English grammar, punctuation and spelling test framework describes the spelling paper as follows:

“This paper consists of 20 target words, presented within 20 distinct, contextualised sentences.

The range of strategies and morphological awareness tested is drawn from the statutory spelling appendix to the national curriculum programme of study (2014). The test may include the example words and words drawn from the key stage 2 word lists provided as appendices to the national curriculum (2014), but will not be limited to these and is likely to draw on other words that assess the content described in Table 3.

There are three sections of the key stage 2 statutory spelling appendix that will be assessed only in Paper 1: possessive apostrophe with plural words, use of the hyphen, and contractions.”

There are 24 KS2 content domains in spelling that have appeared in the spelling SATs papers (S38 – S61). These are listed in the mark schemes.

Our previous analysis of the spelling paper 

In our analysis of the previous spelling SATs papers, you can see the content domains of all the spellings children have previously been tested on.

An italic word means it appears under more than one content domain.

A blue word is one of the first three of the test – generally considered slightly easier to spell.

A red word is one of the final three of the test – generally considered slightly harder to spell.

Using these, we can make an educated guess as to what might come up this year and, therefore, where you could focus any last-minute spelling revision.

What’s most likely to come up in the spelling test

The most common spelling domains (those that have appeared the most since 2017) are as follows:

• S38: adding suffixes beginning with vowel letters to words of more than one syllable (has appeared 11 times across the 6 papers)

• S60: words with ‘silent’ letters (i.e. letters whose presence cannot be predicted from the pronunciation of the word) (has appeared 9 times)

• S43: the suffix –ly (has appeared 8 times)

• S47: endings that sound like /ʃən/, spelt –tion, –sion, –ssion, –cian (has appeared 8 times)

Here are words that fit each content domain that haven’t yet appeared in SATs

There are three content domains that didn’t appear in 2024, but were consistently represented from 2018 – 2023, so we could assume that they would be more likely to appear this year.

• S51: words with the /s/ sound spelt sc

• S58: words with the /i:/ sound spelt ei after c

• S59: words containing the letter string ough

Here are words that fit each content domain that haven’t yet appeared in SATs

Spelling predictions for fun!

And lastly, just for fun, here are some specific word predictions for this year (seeing as last year I managed to predict one correctly!). Here are some content domains where there aren’t many words to fit each rule, which leaves only a few words when cross-checking against the ‘example words’ in Appendix 1:

·   S40: the /ʌ/ sound spelt ou (appeared once every year since 2018): double or country

·   S48: words with the /k/ sound spelt ch (appeared once every year since 2017): scheme, chemist or echo

·   S50: words ending with the /g/ sound spelt –gue and the /k/ sound spelt –que (only appeared 4 times but not many words to fit rule): antique

So maybe practise this sentence every day…

“The chemist found an antique bottle and made a scheme to double the medicine in the country, and his idea got an echo of support.”

…and you’ve got all bases covered! 😉

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