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2018 KS2 SATs reading papers
Year 6 · with the official mark scheme
The reading SATs papers that Year 6 children in England sat on Tuesday 15 May 2018, at the end of Key Stage 2. One reading booklet and one answer booklet, sat together. 50 marks in all. That year, 28 marks reached the expected standard. They open on GOV.UK, with the mark scheme.
Why these open on GOV.UK
The reading booklets contain material we are not allowed to host, so these link to the official copy. Same file, one click further.
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2018 key stage 2 English reading booklet
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2018 key stage 2 English reading: answer booklet
2018 reading at a glance
- Sat on Tuesday 15 May 2018
- Marks for the expected standard 28 out of 50 (a scaled score of 100)
- Marks for the higher standard 40 out of 50 (a scaled score of 110)
- Across England 75% of pupils reached the expected standard, and 28% the higher standard.
What your child's mark means
Add up the marks with the mark scheme, then find the total on this bar. These are the 2018 boundaries; other years are slightly different.
0 to 27 marks Working towards the expected standard
28 to 39 marks Expected standard (100 to 109)
40 to 50 marks Higher standard (110 to 120)
For the exact scaled score for every mark, see the 2018 conversion table. Fewer than 3 marks gets no scaled score.
How 2018 compares with other years
The marks needed for the expected standard change every year, because some papers turn out a little harder than others. For reading, it has ranged from 21 marks (2016) to 29 marks (2022).
In 2018, 28 marks were needed for the expected standard, 2 more than in 2017. That makes it one of the papers that needed more marks than usual, which suggests children found it a little easier. 75% of pupils reached the expected standard, compared with 72% in 2017.
Average, 26 marks. Columns start at 16 marks so the differences show. There were no tests in 2020 or 2021.
What was different in 2018
Grammar, punctuation and spelling moved to the Monday and reading to the Tuesday, after feedback from head teachers. That is the order still used today. The way schools assess writing also changed this year.
What this paper set is
One reading booklet and one answer booklet, sat together. 50 marks.
A raw mark on its own does not mean very much. It is converted to a scaled score between 80 and 120, where 100 is the expected standard, and the conversion changes every year because the papers differ slightly in difficulty. How KS2 SATs work explains the whole thing, including where to find that year's conversion table.
Dates and marks from the Standards and Testing Agency's 2018 conversion table and 2018 assessment arrangements. National figures from the Department for Education.
Contains material developed by the Standards and Testing Agency for 2018 national curriculum assessments and licensed under Open Government Licence v3.0.