Year 6 SATs

Paper 1: arithmetic

The arithmetic paper in the Year 6 maths SATs: 40 marks of calculations in 30 minutes, with no calculator.

Practise Paper 1 questions

Work on the calculations that need it, with no time limit.

Practice 5, 10 or 20 questions

Choose how many questions and which calculations to work on. Type each answer, and when one is wrong, see how to work it out. No clock.

Start practising

Take a mock test

The whole paper, against the clock, with no help until the end.

Mock test 36 questions, 30 minutes

The paper's own length and its own clock. At the end you get your score out of 40, and how to work out the ones you missed.

Start the mock

For grown-ups

Paper 1 is the first of the three maths papers in the Year 6 SATs. For the test dates, the other two papers and how scores work, see the SATs guide.

What is on Paper 1

  • 40 marks in 30 minutes, with no calculator.
  • Every question is a calculation, like 35% of 400 or 3/4 + 1/8. There are no word problems.

How Paper 1 is marked

  • Most questions are worth 1 mark, for the right answer.
  • Long multiplication and long division are worth 2 marks. A wrong answer can still get 1 mark if the formal written method is right, with no more than one slip.
  • The grid method earns no method mark. Chunking can, as long as every chunk is a different size.

Our practice marks the answer only, so it cannot give that method mark.

How to help with Paper 1

  • Practise the written methods on paper as well: column addition and subtraction, short and long multiplication, and short and long division. On the real paper, the working is written by hand.
  • Estimate first. 4,019 × 23 is about 4,000 × 20, which is 80,000, so an answer of 9,245 has a slip in it.
  • Read to the end of the question. A fraction answer can be a mixed number or an improper fraction, and it does not have to be in its simplest form: any equivalent fraction gets the mark.

Past papers

Doing a past Paper 1 against a 30 minute timer shows how the real paper feels. The last three years of papers and their mark schemes are free on GOV.UK: past test materials on GOV.UK.

We write our own practice questions in the style of Paper 1. None are copied from real papers.