Year 6 SATS Maths - help please!

[Thingsthatgo]

I have been looking at some SATS papers with DD. She says that her teacher has told her to always round up answers to 2 decimal places, but I am not sure that this is correct in all cases. We just did this question (see photo) and DD wrote 0.63 for the final answer, and I said she should write 0.625.
Would she still get the mark if she had rounded up?

No she wouldn’t get the mark if she rounded up.

Wouldn’t it say in the paper somewhere if they want you to round up and to how many decimal places?

Thank you, I agree. Will the paper specify when to round up?

@sittingonabeach sorry, cross posted!

Just to put your daughter at ease, the paper will either say directly whether to round up, or you use the same amount of decimal places as the biggest in the question.
Eg- if they have 0.4, 0.45, 0.6, 0.5 then you would round to 2 d.p
-0.345, 0.54, 0.45 you would round to 3 d.p.

But mostly, remind your sweet baby to take a deep breath, and that the test doesnt measure how wonderful she is as a human being, or how creative she is, or how funny or kind.

(Also have a SATs goer on monday and she has put far too much pressure on herself and I hate it!)

Good luck to your baby ❤️

Only round if she is told to round or if a precise answer would be wrong eg £1.435p or "they need to hire 13.7 buses". At KS2, there is no blanket rule to round to 2dp.

She should write the exact answer and only round if the question specifically says.

in addition it’s generally a good idea to show workings so even if the question says to round she should write the exact answer somewhere on the sheet and then round to put it in the answer box.

Thanks for all of your help. Her teacher has been brilliant in lots of ways, but is new to year 6, and some of her teaching has been questionable!

On a similar topic, my DD's teacher has said they don't need to give fractions in simplest form unless specified. I would have thought it was best practice to always simplify. Any thoughts on this?

Yes I think my dd has been told to simplify if it’s a top heavy fraction, but other than that you would still get the mark. My dd not great at simplifying fractions but teacher said they don’t need to worry for the SATS

In arithmetic, fractions only need to be simplified if they are a whole number. This only really comes up when multiplying fractions for example 1/5 times 10. All other fractions can be left.

In reasoning, it depends on the context of the question and whether it asks you to simply.

Thank you!

@Quokkafeet Equivalent fractions are accepted on the arithmetic test.

The teacher is right. It can be best to not simplify to avoid risk of mistakes under pressure