SATs Results 2023: All You Need To Know

It's SATs results day 2023 - what a year it has been for these national tests! We couldn't let the day go by without asking our favourite numbers aficionado, Sophie Bartlett, her thoughts and feelings.

Given the SATs marking chaos this year, it’s a surprise we even made it to this point! But here we are – the dreaded (long-awaited?) results day. I remember being on a residential one year when the results came out; my partner teacher and I sat with lukewarm, anaemic cups of tea in a freezing cold ‘staffroom’ (if you’ve been on a residential before, you know the sort…) hitting refresh on The World’s Slowest Laptop trying to access the elusive PAG page. Hopefully, at the very least, most of you are experiencing this annual joy in the warmth of your headteacher’s office, this year!

What were the KS2 SATs 2023 pass marks?

The raw scores required to reach expected standard (EXS – a scaled score of 100) and ‘greater depth’ (GDS – generally accepted to be a scaled score of 110) can be seen below.

SATs 2023 average scaled scores

As usual, there have been no drastic changes to the average scaled scores in each subject – in fact, since last year, there have been no changes at all.

How many children achieved the expected standard in 2023?

Reading

Disregarding 2016 as an anomaly, the percentage of children achieving EXS in reading has historically hovered in the low-mid 70s. Reading was the only subject not to drop following COVID. However, this year, it is the only subject in which national attainment has fallen since last year (and that’s even with one of the lowest ‘pass’ marks its ever had), from 75% in 2022 to 73% in 2023.

Writing

After a drop of 9% last year (to be expected after COVID), writing results have now risen by 2%, from 69% in 2022 to 71% this year.

Maths

The maths results also saw a drop last year, with the lowest proportion of children achieving EXS since 2016. They are back on the rise again this year with 73%, up 2% last year.

Reading, writing, maths (combined)

There is no change from last year at 59%, again, the lowest since 2016.

Grammar, punctuation and spelling

This year’s data also remains unchanged from last year at 72% with, again, the lowest ever percentage of children achieving EXS.

Note: There is missing data for writing in 2016 and 2017 as changes made within the 2017/18 writing TA frameworks mean that judgements in 2018 are not directly comparable to those made using the previous interim frameworks in 2016 and 2017.

Maths results analysis

The pass mark for maths this year is the lowest it’s ever been at 56/110 – historically, it’s always been between 57-61. The same pattern follows for the typically accepted ‘GDS’ boundary (assuming this stays at a scaled score of 110) – again, it’s the lowest it’s ever been at 94/110 (the range has previously been between 95-98).

Prediction: The ‘pass’ mark each year has been between 52-55%. Theoretically, children should be able to meet the expected standards by almost exclusively knowing content from Years 3-5… In theory, children should [also] be able to meet the expected standards by exclusively knowing content from the calculations and FDP content domains.

We were correct! Theoretically, children should have been able to ‘pass’ (51%) by almost exclusively knowing content from Years 3-5 (59%) or by almost exclusively knowing content from the calculations and FDP content domains (62%).

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!)

Reading results analysis

Prediction: One clear pattern is that the difficulty of the reading paper (‘difficulty’ being how many marks are required to ‘pass’ it) is steadily increasing – this is probably worth noting in terms of expectations for 2023.

Last year, for a reading paper with one of the fewest amount of words, we had the highest pass mark so far.

This year, to our delight, it has finally dropped. Not quite to the lowly depths of 2016 (21/50!), but it is the second lowest mark it has ever been (and yet the highest word count!). This was, perhaps, to be expected, considering how much trickier the paper seemed this year. The reading GDS boundary has also progressively risen each year so far, from 68% in 2016 to 82% last year. This pattern also breaks with, again, the second lowest mark it has ever been (38/50).

Grammar results analysis

Last year’s pass mark for GPS was the lowest we’d ever seen at only 50%. This year, it’s only slightly higher at 51% - the same pass mark we saw in both 2017 and 2019.

The GDS boundary for GPS has fallen each year so far, from 87% in 2016 to 79% last year. This year, it has remained the same at 79%, with the same ‘GDS’ mark as the previous two years. With a pass mark this year of 51%, children could have passed the 2023 Grammar paper by answering questions related solely to content domains G1 and G5 – just like last year, this has been the case every year since 2017.

As with the maths test content above, it’s worth noting that although there are seven content domains in the KS2 English GPS test framework, they are not all weighted equally. G5 has the most content within it (15 topics, ranging from G5.1: capital letters to G5.14: bullet points) whereas G2, G6 and G7 contains the least (four topics each).

This goes some way to explaining the distribution of marks across the content domains (i.e. the most marks are allocated to domains G1 and G5 because they contain the most content).

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 this year’s spelling test meant you would only need 16/50 on the grammar test to still reach the expected standard overall.

SATs results 2023: what now?

If you have any 98s, 99s, 108s or 109s, I would definitely get checking those papers to see if you can pick up any extra marks. It could take only one extra mark to tip the scale into a ‘pass’ – for small schools particularly, this potential one mark could mean a difference in data of 7% (based on a cohort of 15 children)! We know from experience that there can be marking discrepancies, meaning that – combined with the aforementioned controversy surrounding SATs marking – it’s worth poring over some of those ‘boundary’ papers. After reporting to parents and governors, your data may be used as a basis for forming some of your SDP priorities for next year. However, let’s remember…

• These tests are only a snapshot: they are under four hours’ work which are supposed to represent seven years of education (and that’s not forgetting the COVID gap!). They only assess a fraction of the National Curriculum.

• Year 6 teachers should not take any blame, or feel any guilt, if the results are lower than expected – these children have had six years of schooling prior to Year 6, potentially with 6+ different teachers, and only eight months in Year 6 before the tests.

• Year 6 teachers equally should not take all the glory if the results are amazing! See above.

• Every school approaches the tests differently: some schools put focus on SATs from the very beginning of Year 6; some have more of a relaxed approach. Many different factors come into play when it comes to producing these results – including children’s confidence and wellbeing on the actual day.

• It’s not all about attainment – don’t forget to check/calculate your progress scores. This is arguably more important than attainment as it’s about how far the children have come whilst at your school.

• There is so much more to the children, and your school, then these numbers. Look at the children in your care and consider how many other ways they have progressed that the government don’t measure – have they secured a speaking part in your play? Have they won a sports match? Do they stay in their seat for the whole lesson now? Each of these could be a ‘win’ for specific children you have in mind.

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