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2026 KS2 SATs grammar and spelling papers
Year 6 · with the official mark scheme
The grammar, punctuation and spelling SATs papers that Year 6 children in England sat on Monday 11 May 2026, at the end of Key Stage 2. Two papers. Paper 1 is questions; Paper 2 is spelling, read aloud by the teacher. 70 marks in all. That year, 34 marks reached the expected standard. Free to download with the mark scheme, no sign-up.
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2026 key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling Paper 1: questions
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2026 key stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling Paper 2: spelling
2026 grammar, punctuation and spelling at a glance
- Sat on Monday 11 May 2026
- Marks for the expected standard 34 out of 70 (a scaled score of 100)
- Marks for the higher standard 55 out of 70 (a scaled score of 110)
- Across England 74% of pupils reached the expected standard, and 30% the higher standard (provisional figures).
What your child's mark means
Add up the marks with the mark scheme, then find the total on this bar. These are the 2026 boundaries; other years are slightly different.
0 to 33 marks Working towards the expected standard
34 to 54 marks Expected standard (100 to 109)
55 to 70 marks Higher standard (110 to 120)
For the exact scaled score for every mark, see the 2026 conversion table. Fewer than 3 marks gets no scaled score.
How 2026 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 grammar, punctuation and spelling, it has ranged from 34 marks (2026) to 43 marks (2016).
In 2026, 34 marks were needed for the expected standard, 1 fewer than in 2025. That makes it one of the papers that needed fewer marks than usual, which suggests children found it a little harder. 74% of pupils reached the expected standard, compared with 73% in 2025.
Average, 36 marks. Columns start at 30 marks so the differences show. There were no tests in 2020 or 2021.
What was different in 2026
The usual Monday-to-Thursday timetable. Results were due on Tuesday 7 July but reached schools on Thursday 16 July instead, after the Department for Education wrote to schools on 2 July about the delay. The national figures for 2026 are provisional until the Department publishes its revised statistics.
What this paper set is
Two papers. Paper 1 is questions; Paper 2 is spelling, read aloud by the teacher. 70 marks in total.
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.
Giving the spelling test at home
- Print Paper 2: spelling for your child. It has 20 sentences, each with a gap.
- Open the mark scheme and find "Mark schemes for Paper 2: spelling". It lists the 20 words in order.
- For each one, say the word, read the whole sentence with the word in it, then say the word again. Your child writes the word in the gap.
- Mark it with the same table: one mark per word, 20 marks in all.
Paper 2 is the spelling test. The Year 5 and 6 spelling list has all 100 words Year 6 are expected to know, with their tricky parts, a spelling test that reads the words out, and sheets to print.
Dates and marks from the Standards and Testing Agency's 2026 conversion table and 2026 assessment arrangements. National figures from the Department for Education (provisional).
Contains material developed by the Standards and Testing Agency for 2026 national curriculum assessments and licensed under Open Government Licence v3.0.