Assessments and tests
Although you may remember exam halls and papers with dread, at primary school level, assessments are much more informal. Indeed, you may find that in the early years your child isn’t even aware they are being tested!
Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA)
Within the first six weeks of starting primary school, your child will take the Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA), which assesses early maths, literacy, communication and language skills. It’ll take place in their classroom, with their usual teacher or learning assistant, so they won’t be aware they’re being assessed.
It’s short (around 15 minutes), and consists of your child answering questions verbally or by pointing at or moving objects while their teacher records the results.
These results aren’t published or shared with you, pupils, teachers or even the school. They are only used by the Department for Education to measure the progress of your child’s year group between reception and Year 6, to see how well schools support their pupils throughout their primary school journey.
Teachers will receive a written statement that describes how your child performed and you can see this if you would like to, just ask your school.
The RBA has been designed to be inclusive and accessible so that as many children as possible, including those with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) or English as an additional language (EAL), can take part. There are also modified materials available for children with visual and hearing impairments.
Phonics Screening Check
In Year 1 your child will undertake the Phonics Screening Check, a very quick test (only five-10 minutes) which assesses their ability to break down words into their component sounds and correctly read them.
Your child will take the test individually with their teacher and be asked to read aloud forty words of varying difficulty, including some that aren’t real words at all.
These made-up words are included to see if children can decode the sounds to correctly read them, so the teacher can see whether they will be able to apply the same principles to learning new words as their vocabulary grows. These non-words have a picture of a monster next to them so they don’t learn them as real words.
The test is scored by the teacher and the results used to identify those children who need an extra boost to improve their phonics skills. A child must read at least 32 of the words correctly to pass.
You’ll be shown your child’s score but individual results aren’t shared anywhere else. Ofsted receives school-level results and national and local authority results are reported online — this allows schools to compare the overall performance of their Year 1 intake.
You can learn more about the Phonics Screening Check in this government guidance. For more general information on the phonics method of teaching children to read, see our guide to phonics.
SATs
Your child will sit two lots of SATs while they’re at primary school, at the end of Key Stage (KS) 1 and again at the end of KS2. They’ll probably be the most formal assessments they’ll experience while they’re there but schools do work hard to ensure that children don’t feel pressured, especially at KS1 level.
The KS1 and KS2 SATs vary slightly in how they are assessed, marked and reported, so we’ve dealt with each one in turn.
KS1
The KS1 SATs help teachers check what children have learnt in maths and English over the previous two years.
Your child will take two English papers and two maths papers, each lasting around 20–40 minutes, and there might be grammar, punctuation and spelling tests too. Separate teacher assessments also check on progress in reading, writing, maths and science over time.
The assessments can be set at any point, so your child shouldn’t feel extra pressure or even be particularly aware of their significance.
Tests are marked by your child’s teacher. The results are only used internally, they’re not published or sent to the government, and you’ll receive a summary which will tell you if your child is working at the expected level. If you want to see a more detailed breakdown of results then just ask your school.
KS2
The KS2 SATs are taken in the May of Year 6 and although schools try not to make them a big deal, your child will be aware they are being tested. Your child’s school may organise extra tuition sessions or go through past papers in the run-up to the assessments and normal lessons for Year 6 are usually suspended while SATs take place.
When it comes to the tests, your child will take six different papers in all, three in English and three in maths, and be assessed by their teacher throughout the year on reading, writing, maths and science.
Unlike in KS1, KS2 SATs are marked externally. While the results can be used to assess your child’s academic ability, their main purpose is to rate the school’s performance, by calculating the progress that pupils make between KS1 (using the RBA results) and KS2. The proportion of children in each school achieving the required minimum standards is then published at a national level.
You’ll get to see the results along with a teacher’s assessment in July.
What do I do if my child performs belows expectations?
To be clear — you can’t actually “fail” SATs. SATs have an expected level and your child will be identified as working at or working below the expected level. If your child’s results are slightly lower than expected, please try not to worry and try not to see any score as a ‘failure’. It can be an emotional time and your child may feel disappointed and even humiliated if their results aren’t what they wanted.
The best advice is to try and get them to see their results in perspective, it is just another part of their learning experience. SATs also only test children on three subjects and these may not be the subjects they are strong at. It is not a reflection of their capabilities. Remind them that the results will not overly (if at all) impact on their future.
What happens with the results will depend on the school, some secondary schools will use them to put children into academic streams, whilst others will not use them at all. For more information on how SATS are used this guide offers a comprehensive review.
The most important thing for you to do is praise them for all their hard work regardless of the outcome. It’s important that they don’t feel like a failure and remain positive about education and exams. Also, use the results as a learning experience for both of you. What did it tell you about their revision tactics and learning style? Use the experience as good preparation for the other exams that will be coming down the line in a few years. This guide offers some other good tactics to cope with any disappointment.
Department for Education (DfE)SATs help the government to ensure that its schools are educating children to the expected standard, since children are taught from the same National Curriculum across England. A run of poor results may indicate to the government schools that they are struggling.
CATs
CATs aren’t compulsory and are based on reasoning rather than knowledge.
Your child will be given multiple-choice questions that ask them to work through certain problems, apply logic or connect basic facts and the results allow teachers to assess your child’s verbal reasoning (thinking with words), quantitative reasoning (thinking with numbers), non-verbal reasoning (thinking with shapes and space) and spatial ability (thinking with visual images).
CATs are marked externally. Results aren’t published anywhere but some schools will buy individual reports for parents that explain each child’s results and suggest ways to support their learning at home.
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The National Curriculum covers learning for all children aged 5 — 18 in state schools.
