SATS Maths Papers
KS2 Maths SATs Past Papers
Every KS2 Maths SATs paper from 2016 onwards, all free. Question papers, mark schemes and level thresholds in one place.
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Check a KS2 Maths SATs mark
Marked a paper? Turn the raw mark into the scaled score it would have earned that year.
Check a KS2 Maths SATs mark
Marked a paper? Turn the raw mark into the scaled score it would have earned that year.
KS2 SATs scaled score converter
Turn a raw mark on a past KS2 paper into the scaled score it would have earned that year. A scaled score of 100 is the expected standard; 110 or more counts as working at greater depth in reading and maths.
| Raw mark | Reading | GPS | Maths |
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How to use these KS2 maths papers properly
The KS2 maths SATs are three papers sat in the May of Year 6. Knowing how the marks are split changes where practice time is worth spending, because the three papers test genuinely different things.
The three papers are not equivalent
| Paper | What it tests | Time | Marks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 1 | Arithmetic, bare calculations | 30 min | 40 |
| Paper 2 | Reasoning and problem solving | 40 min | 35 |
| Paper 3 | Reasoning and problem solving | 40 min | 35 |
Paper 1 is over a third of the total and contains no word problems at all. It is pure calculation, and it is the most improvable paper on the whole test, because fluency responds quickly to short daily practice in a way that reasoning does not.
If your child is below the expected standard and you have limited time, arithmetic fluency is where that time goes first. Ten minutes a day of column methods, times tables and fraction operations moves the arithmetic paper within weeks.
Where reasoning marks are lost
Papers 2 and 3 fail for a different reason. The maths inside a reasoning question is usually easier than the arithmetic paper. What is hard is working out which operation the question wants and in what order.
The recurring losses we see: multi-step problems where the child does step one and stops, ratio and proportion questions, converting between units, and any question involving time. Also worth knowing: the multiple-mark questions award method marks, so showing working is worth real marks even when the final answer is wrong. Plenty of children write nothing but the answer.
A useful drill is to read a reasoning question together and only plan it, out loud, without solving it. Do six of those in the time it would take to solve two. The bottleneck is the planning.
What the scaled score actually means
SATs results are not reported as a raw mark or a percentage. Each raw score is converted to a scaled score, where 100 is the expected standard and the scale runs from 80 to 120.
The conversion changes every year, because it adjusts for how hard that year's papers were. So a raw mark that reached 100 last year might not this year, and comparing raw marks across years tells you very little. Our scaled score converter holds the published tables so you can see what a practice mark would actually have been worth.
Worth saying plainly to a Year 6 child: nothing about the number changes which secondary school they go to. SATs are a measure of the school as much as the pupil, and secondary schools use them for setting rather than admission.
Building fluency without it becoming a chore
Short and daily beats long and weekly for arithmetic. Our free times tables trainer and quick maths challenge both run in a few minutes and give a score, which makes progress visible at a finer grain than a paper every fortnight.
For the underlying methods rather than the speed, our interactive lessons cover column addition and subtraction, short division, grid and column multiplication, fractions and place value, each starting from the basic version and stepping up.
Questions parents ask
Do KS2 SATs affect which secondary school my child gets into?
No. Secondary admissions are decided before SATs are sat. Schools use the results for setting and baseline expectations once the child arrives.
This is worth telling an anxious Year 6, because a lot of test stress comes from a belief that the whole future rides on it.
What is a good score?
100 is the expected standard. 110 and above is usually described as working at greater depth.
The more useful question is whether the score is moving. A child who goes from 92 to 99 has had a good year, whatever the letter says.
How many past papers should we do?
Fewer than you would think. Two or three full sets across the spring term, with the gaps taught properly in between, does more than a paper every week.
Daily arithmetic practice is the exception. That genuinely benefits from volume.