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2023 KS2 SATs maths papers
Year 6 · with the official mark scheme
The maths SATs papers that Year 6 children in England sat on Thursday 11 May and Friday 12 May 2023, at the end of Key Stage 2. Three papers. Paper 1 is arithmetic; Papers 2 and 3 are reasoning. 110 marks in all. That year, 56 marks reached the expected standard. Free to download with the mark scheme, no sign-up.
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2023 key stage 2 mathematics Paper 1: arithmetic
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2023 key stage 2 mathematics Paper 2: reasoning
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2023 key stage 2 mathematics Paper 3: reasoning
2023 maths at a glance
- Sat on Thursday 11 May 2023 (Papers 1 and 2), and Friday 12 May 2023 (Paper 3)
- Marks for the expected standard 56 out of 110 (a scaled score of 100)
- Marks for the higher standard 94 out of 110 (a scaled score of 110)
- Across England 73% of pupils reached the expected standard, and 24% 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 55 marks Working towards the expected standard
56 to 93 marks Expected standard (100 to 109)
94 to 110 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 maths, it has ranged from 54 marks (2024) to 61 marks (2018).
In 2023, 56 marks were needed for the expected standard, 2 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 72% in 2022.
Average, 58 marks. Columns start at 50 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
Three papers. Paper 1 is arithmetic; Papers 2 and 3 are reasoning. 110 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.
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.