How to decipher Year 6 SATs scores

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DD got 120 in maths, 116 in English and 114 in reading. Those figures are then broken down into individual sections like arithmetic, punctuation etc etc but no explanation for what anything is out of or what it means overall.

How do you work it all out??

Can I ask if schools are legally required to give out the SATS numerical scores, or can they just say "yes, you passed", "yes, you passed at the higher level" or "no, you failed".

There is an awful lot of confusion at our primary school over this.

Our school have an a4 explanation of what the results meant compared to national average. You do need to look carefully. I didn't turn the paper over until a few days later

Reports to parents must include the pupil’s scaled score, and whether or not they met the ‘expected standard’

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/601108/20177KS2ARAAv2.0.pdf

DD was terrified about doing her SATs but is really laid back about her results which is good. Her results were 112, 118 and 120 and she is meeting expectations for KS2. Does this sound like her sats results were, for want of a better word, a bit of a fluke?

Mine were the same last year. Good sats results but meeting expectations generally. He is now thriving at secondary. Unlike many I actually think the sats were good for him

DD was terrified about doing her SATs but is really laid back about her results which is good. Her results were 112, 118 and 120 and she is meeting expectations for KS2. Does this sound like her sats results were, for want of a better word, a bit of a fluke?

Well are you saying that all through school she has been average, middle range attainment with no suggestion of being above average ability? To suddenly attain a scaled score of 120 i.e dropping just a few marks across the papers when there has been no indication that she is capable of that would be unusual.

Thank you. She fluctuates between average and above average. She was on a very high centile when she started school, for a couple of years, but then evened out. She has asd so does have anxiety issues when it comes to learning as she panics if she doesn't get it first time. It just seems a bit odd I suppose

Is this about it only being possible to get above expectations in teacher assessment in the writing category again? 120 clearly isn't just meeting expectations is it! Is her lowest mark the writing one? The others could simply be ones which in terms of teacher comment simply cannot be better than meeting.

Again, what an odd system when it isn't possible to get exceeding in all categories and when this isn't even made clear to people.

We didn't get a mark for the reading one. The meeting expectations is in the teachers comments bit where it says about how she has done and what she had struggled with during ks2. The system does seem odd, in the practice tests they were told the mark to pass and the mark for exceeding etc.

Also I've got concerns about if secondary schools use the information to help stream the children. She's not currently in the top sets for English and Maths and that could come as a bit of a shock for her.

Ds got a scaled score of 120 for SPAG, 117 for Maths and 110 for Reading. He was marked as exceeding expectations for Writing.

If ours are anything to go by secondary schools do their own assesment in the first term.

My daughter got expected in all her subjects - maths 102 and reading and writing 114 and 115. I know she struggles with maths so was pleased she made the grade but should her English results be exceeding expected if out of 120?

We were told the powers that be haven't decided what exceeding standard is as yet. Last year it was above 110.

Can anyone explain how the scaled scores work? Are the thresholds different for each? If not I think our SPAG might be overmarked.

For SPAG DS got 120 (50 for punctuation and grammar but 17 for spelling so missed 3 points but still got 120)

In reading he got 119 (46, so missed 4 points)

In maths he got 117 (40, 34 and 33, so I think 3 points missed there)

Does that sound right to those In the know?

Here are the conversion tables for raw scores to scaled scores. It is possible to get the highest scaled score (120) without getting 100% right in the tests.

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/624645/2017_KS2_scaled_score_conversion_tables.pdf

thank you Patricia that explains it perfectly. I was a little confused.

Thanks to the later people who came and responded, I had stopped checking the post thanks to all the love...
Obviously I know she is clever, but the results have never been explained in any way, esp the confusion of the scaled score bit, so until I started this thread, I hadn't really even praised her!
And yeah it is a crap school really, there's a leavers' assembly tomorrow that we still haven't been told the time for...

I'm glad I read this thread as DS came home with his results today. He got 114,114,114.

DS was pleased with the marks but quite upset that he hadn't achieved 'exceeded' when he has previously. Thanks to this thread I could reassure him that it wasn't possible to exceed expectations.

His next question was 'Which bright spark came up with that idea then?'

Lol. She knew it was high before she posted. 😂 #stealthboast

I am a teacher and have checked the government website for 2017 SATS. The government gives raw scores, and also standardised or 'scaled' scores which can be compared year on year. The standardised scores for each test are out of 120. To achieve at the national required standard for each test, a pupil must get 100/120. Pupils getting at least 100 scaled score for each test have 'passed' and met government-defined standards. This year around 70% of pupils met the standard of 100+; last year it was around 50%. The averages for the reading, SPAG and maths tests in 2017 were 104/120; 106/120; 104/120. Thus, the scores mentioned by mums here are, in reality, extremely HIGH - hugely impressive scores from what must be very high achieving pupils indeed. Most pupils will not get such scores and most will be scoring around 106, 105, 108 etc. Anything much higher than that is very advanced. Also remember that this year around 30% of pupils did NOT achieve the 100 scaled score required so did not meet the required standard. Thus these very high scores of 115+ mentioned above will be relatively rare across the UK. Just from perusing records of my secondary pupils in year seven now, I know that scores of much higher than 109 were reasonably rare ... so scores of 120 are virtually unheard of across the whole cohort although there must be children that get them.

This year around 70% of pupils met the standard of 100+; last year it was around 50%

Last year was 53%. This year it's 61%.

That's nowhere near 70%!

Maybe the 70% was the average pass rate for individual subjects, Feenie. Haven't got the figures on me but I think the 61% was for reaching expected standard in all of reading, writing and maths.

DD got 108 Maths, 116 Reading and 117 Spag. And she's not alone in her class with those scores... some higher. Just an average cohort in and average school too, in prob a below average area of uk, so I'm surprised to hear 115+ would be rare.

It was. Reading was 71%, Maths 75%. SPAG 77% and Writing 76%.

They're obviously all provisional atm.