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2026 KS2 SATs maths papers
Year 6 · with the official mark scheme
The maths SATs papers that Year 6 children in England sat on Wednesday 13 May and Thursday 14 May 2026, 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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2026 key stage 2 mathematics Paper 1: arithmetic
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2026 key stage 2 mathematics Paper 2: reasoning
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2026 key stage 2 mathematics Paper 3: reasoning
2026 maths at a glance
- Sat on Wednesday 13 May 2026 (Papers 1 and 2), and Thursday 14 May 2026 (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 75% of pupils reached the expected standard, and 27% 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 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 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 maths, it has ranged from 54 marks (2024) to 61 marks (2018).
In 2026, 56 marks were needed for the expected standard, 2 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. 75% of pupils reached the expected standard, compared with 74% in 2025.
Average, 58 marks. Columns start at 50 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
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 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.