Statutory Assessment

Children are defined as having reached a Good Level of Development (GLD) at the end of EYFS if they have achieved at least the expected level for the ELGs in the prime areas of learning and the specific areas of mathematics and literacy. This helps teachers and parents to understand broadly what a child can do in relation to national expectations.

The phonics screening check is a quick and easy check of your child's phonics knowledge. It helps the school confirm whether your child has made the expected progress and helps us to identify whether your child needs additional support at this stage in developing their early reading skills. The phonics screening check contains 40 words divided into two sections of 20 words. Both sections contain a mixture of real words and pseudo-words. Pseudo-words are words that are phonically decodable but are not actual words with an associated meaning. Pseudo-words are included in the check specifically to assess whether your child can decode a word using their phonics skills. 

Your child’s teacher is responsible for judging the standards your child is working at in English reading, English writing, mathematics, and science, by the end of key stage 1 (KS1). To help inform those judgements, pupils sit national curriculum assessments in English and mathematics, commonly called SATs. The tests are a tool for teachers to help them measure your child’s performance and identify their needs as they move into KS2. The tests can be taken at a time appropriate to the school (usually in May or June), and they are not strictly timed. Pupils may not even know they are taking them as many teachers will incorporate them into everyday classroom activities. Teachers will use the results from these tests, along with the work your child has done throughout the year, to help them reach their own judgements about how your child is progressing at the end of key stage 1. From 2023, these assessments are no longer compulsory, but school will still use them informally to help our teachers reach an informed decision about your child’s progress. 

These percentages show how many of our pupils achieved the expected standard or above. 

Some of our children achieve the higher standard: 

If you have a child in year 6, at the end of key stage 2 (KS2), they will take national curriculum assessments in English grammar, punctuation and spelling, English reading and mathematics. The tests help measure the progress pupils have made, and identify if they need additional support in a certain area. The tests are also used to assess schools’ performance and to produce national performance data. As there is no test for English writing, this will be reported as a teacher assessment judgement. This is a judgement that teachers will make, based on your child’s work at the end of KS2.

These percentages show how many of our pupils achieved the expected standard or above. 

Some of our children achieve the higher standard: 

Another way of showing Key Stage 2 results is a scaled score. The raw score (the actual number of marks a child scores) will be translated into a scaled score. The questions in the test paper are different every year, so the level of difficulty may slightly vary from year to year. For this reason, raw scores are converted into scaled scores to ensure accurate comparisons of pupil performance over time. 

A scaled score of 100 or more means a child is working at the expected standard, while a score below 100 indicates that a child hasn’t reached the government expected standard. The maximum score possible is 120 and the minimum is 80. To meet government expectations, pupils must achieve 100 in their scaled scores. However, this equates to different marks for each paper and can change each year. 

Progress measures provide parents with information to help them understand how their school is performing and to inform school choices. In order to calculate the school level progress measures, pupils’ results (at KS2) are compared to the achievements of other pupils across the country who had a similar starting point (prior attainment). Prior attainment is based on teacher assessment judgements at key stage 1 (KS1). Schools have progress measures published for 3 subjects: reading, writing and maths. 

Most schools will have progress scores between −5 and +5. If a school has a progress score of 0 this means that on average their pupils achieved similar results at the end of KS2 (end of year 6) to pupils in other schools with similar results at the end of KS1 (end of year 2). If a school has a positive progress score this means that on average their pupils made more progress than pupils in other schools with similar results at the end of KS1.