Tips for SATs 2023: topics to prioritise

Year 5/6 Teacher, Sophie Bartlett, has taken a deep dive into previous SATs results to bring you some tips on what we might see in the 2023 SATs tests.

2022 saw the first set of SATs papers after a three-year hiatus – did anyone miss them?! Now that we’re back into the swing of all things assessment, and after analysing the content of all five existing sets of SATs papers, we can make some (rather general) assumptions about what might appear in the 2023 SATs tests.

KS2 SATs Maths 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 curriculum of Years 3-5. In the most recent SATS, the content from Years 3-5 was higher than ever before and yet the pass mark remained at 53%. (It is worth mentioning that these papers were originally intended for 2020 and therefore it could not be possible for the test writers to make any adjustments because of Covid ‘gaps’.) 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.

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). In the 2022 SATs paper, the proportion of calculations content increased quite significantly.

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. If you need to prioritise anything in the run-up to the 2023 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)!

KS2 SATs Reading 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 2022 and so it seems sensible to expect it to be the same in 2023 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). This year, for a paper with one of the fewest amount of words, we have the highest pass mark – this could be a reflection of its difficulty.

We could possibly expect the pass mark to either increase again in 2023 or at least stay at 58% (the highest it’s ever been). A poetry extract hasn’t appeared since 2018, so it may be sensible to assume that a poem might be included in the 2023 reading papers.

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KS2 SATs Grammar Paper Analysis and Tips

In order to achieve the expected standard in spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG), the pass mark had been set at 51-54% on the 2017-2019 papers (once again, the 2016 test – as the first SATs paper under the new curriculum – was rather an outlier with a pass mark of 61%). However, the pass mark this year was 50%: the lowest it’s ever been.

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 would only need 15/50 on the grammar test to still reach the expected standard overall), whilst weaker spellers could make up the marks in the grammar test.

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, with a pass mark this year of 50%, children could have passed the 2022 Grammar paper by answering questions related solely to these two content domains – in fact, this is the case every year since 2017. It seems likely that this pattern will repeat in 2023, so get practising your commas and verbs (alongside all the other punctuation and word classes, of course).

Pass / ‘greater depth’ boundaries

On the whole, the ‘grade’ boundaries have stayed relatively similar across the years, particularly between the last SATs papers before Covid and this year’s papers. However, 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.

We hope Sophie's tips for the 2023 SATs gave you some pointers on the areas you may wish to prioritise ahead of the SATs in May.