NFER is out of 140
No; it's a standardised score, so not out of anything.
whilst SATS are out of 120.
Also no. It's a scaled score, so not out of anything.
The underlying raw scores, however, are out of whatever the total marks available were for that particular test.
Scaled scores show whether a pupil has met an expected standard or not. This is different to the 100 in a standardised test, where 100 represents the average during the standardisation and gives you information on the proportion of the population who achieved a particular score.
For the NCTs, the score of 100 represents the threshold of the expected standard, not the national average on the test. If a pupil scores 100 or above, they have achieved the expected standard. If they score lower than 100, they have not met the expected standard and are still working towards it. In the case of the national tests, the national average scaled score is likely to be higher than 100, since the government targets are for all pupils to have reached the expected standard by the end of KS2. In 2018, the national average for reading was a scaled score of 105, for maths was a scaled score of 104, and for grammar, punctuation and spelling a scaled score of 106. In total, 64 per cent of pupils reached the new expected standard for reading, writing and maths.
https://www.nfer.ac.uk/assessment-hub/understanding-scaled-scores/#:~:text=Scaled%20scores%20show%20whether%20a,who%20achieved%20a%20particular%20score.
@frillygillymilly I suspect the 'end of every year' standardised scores referred to are something like scores achieved in CAT4 tests; commonly carried out every year in private schools and administered at the end of e.g. year 5 in some state schools, but not usually done annually in the latter AFAIK.
Assuming that the mocks were carried out as they should have been (sadly, every so often schools do get found out for not doing this in the real thing), then according to the conversion of raw marks to scaled scores for the year's test used, your DD, personally, has been assessed as being near the top of the ability range. Whether it's a school in a naice area and the scaled score is nothing special in that particular school is neither here nor there (just like a standardised score of above 115 would indicate that she was in the top c.16%, assessed against 'the average used during standardisation', to quote NFER above, for that test).