Year 6, every May

KS2 maths SATs

The three maths papers, the 2027 dates and how scores work, with free practice for the arithmetic paper.

Year 6 3 maths papers No calculator Free, no sign-up

The three maths papers

Papers 1 and 2 are sat on the same day in May, Paper 3 the next day, with no calculator in any of them.

Paper 1 Arithmetic 30 minutes, 40 marks Calculations only, from long multiplication to fractions and percentages. Practise Paper 1
Paper 2 Reasoning 40 minutes, 35 marks Problems set in words, from across key stage 2 maths, with diagrams, tables and charts to read. Practice coming soon
Paper 3 Reasoning 40 minutes, 35 marks A second reasoning paper. Some questions ask for the method, not just the answer. Practice coming soon

Reasoning draws on the whole of key stage 2, so there is plenty to practise for it now: Year 5 maths and Year 6 maths.

The official past papers

Free, built to the real paper's length, mix and clock: the closest a child can get to the day itself.

Three years of real papers, with their mark schemes Every paper from the last three years is on GOV.UK, with the mark schemes and the tables that turn marks into a scaled score. Print one, sit it against the clock, and mark it. Open them on GOV.UK

For grown-ups

In May of Year 6, children take the key stage 2 national curriculum tests, often called SATs.

The 2027 dates

The tests run from Monday 10 May to Thursday 13 May. Maths Papers 1 and 2 are on Wednesday 12 May, and Paper 3 is on Thursday 13 May.

  1. Year 6 SATs Maths Papers 1 and 2 Wednesday, 12 May 2027 In about 7 months
  2. Year 6 SATs Maths Paper 3 Thursday, 13 May 2027 In about 7 months
  3. Year 6 SATs Schools get the results Tuesday, 6 July 2027 In about 9 months

How scores work

The marks from the three maths papers are added together, out of 110, and turned into a scaled score. Scaled scores run from 80 to 120, and a score of 100 or more means your child has met the expected standard.

The number of marks needed to reach 100 changes each year, to allow for small differences in how hard each year's tests are. Schools can see results from Tuesday 6 July 2027, and you should get your child's results by the end of the summer term.

How to help at home

  • Little and often: a few questions on most days does more than one long session.
  • When an answer is wrong, find the step that went wrong together before moving on.
  • For the arithmetic paper, see the tips on the Paper 1 page.