Calling any primary teachers or anyone who knows anything about Y6 SATS marking

[goldenticket]

Is it true that a child who doesn't always join their handwriting up cannot achieve a Level 5 for Literacy? Overheard this today and was

TIA

No. At ks3, when we had SATs, English L5 needed to see some evidence of joining - but joining ng occasionally when writing a word ending with ing would tick that box. Work that was clearly L5 standard would not be kept in L4 because it was not cursively written.
HTH

No, it isn't, gherkin is right. Handwriting is worth 3 marks tops - to get a level 5 in writing you need 36 marks out of 50, which is perfectly possible even if you got 0 out of 3 for handwriting (which is practically unheard of anyway, anyone can scrape a 1).

Thanks very much, that's reassuring. I bet there's a few literary geniuses who wouldn't have achieved level 5 if that were really the case, especially the left-handers