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2023 KS2 SATs reading papers
Year 6 · with the official mark scheme
The reading SATs papers that Year 6 children in England sat on Wednesday 10 May 2023, at the end of Key Stage 2. One reading booklet and one answer booklet, sat together. 50 marks in all. That year, 24 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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2023 key stage 2 English reading booklet
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2023 key stage 2 English reading answer booklet
2023 reading at a glance
- Sat on Wednesday 10 May 2023
- Marks for the expected standard 24 out of 50 (a scaled score of 100)
- Marks for the higher standard 38 out of 50 (a scaled score of 110)
- Across England 73% of pupils reached the expected standard, and 29% 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 2023 boundaries; other years are slightly different.
0 to 23 marks Working towards the expected standard
24 to 37 marks Expected standard (100 to 109)
38 to 50 marks Higher standard (110 to 120)
For the exact scaled score for every mark, see the 2023 conversion table. Fewer than 3 marks gets no scaled score.
How 2023 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 2023, 24 marks were needed for the expected standard, 5 fewer than in 2022. That makes it one of the papers that needed fewer marks than usual, which suggests children found it a little harder. 73% of pupils reached the expected standard, compared with 75% in 2022.
Average, 26 marks. Columns start at 16 marks so the differences show. There were no tests in 2020 or 2021.
What was different in 2023
Every test moved one day later than usual, running Tuesday to Friday, because Monday 8 May was the bank holiday for the King's coronation. Results reached schools a week later than normal, on Tuesday 11 July.
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 2023 conversion table and 2023 assessment arrangements. National figures from the Department for Education.
Contains material developed by the Standards and Testing Agency for 2023 national curriculum assessments and licensed under Open Government Licence v3.0.