KS2 SATs 2026 Thresholds: Official Scaled Score Boundaries

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5. KS2 SATs 2026 Thresholds

The 2026 key stage 2 scaled score conversion tables were published by the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) on GOV.UK on 16 July 2026, alongside the national KS2 SATs 2026 results. This page sets out the confirmed, published raw-mark thresholds for Reading, Mathematics and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS), cross-checked against the official GOV.UK tables and two independent education-sector sources, so that parents can see exactly how many raw marks their child's paper score needed to convert into a scaled score of 100 (expected standard) or 110 (higher standard). If you want the fuller context — test dates, format, and what results mean for Year 7 — see our KS2 SATs 2026 Complete Parent Guide; this page focuses specifically on the numeric thresholds and what changed from 2025.

What Are the KS2 SATs 2026 Thresholds?

KS2 SATs results are reported as a scaled score between 80 and 120, not as a raw mark out of the paper total. A scaled score of 100 is the minimum score needed to be classed as "working at the expected standard." Because the difficulty of the Reading, Maths and GPS papers varies slightly from year to year, the STA does not fix the same raw mark to scaled score 100 every year — instead, it recalculates the raw-to-scaled conversion after each set of tests through a statistical equating process, then publishes the resulting conversion table. For the 2026 tests, sat in May 2026, the STA's published conversion tables confirm the following raw-mark thresholds for a scaled score of 100: 25 out of 50 in Reading, 56 out of 110 in Mathematics, and 34 out of 70 in GPS. A pupil needs a minimum of 3 raw marks in any test to be awarded the lowest possible scaled score of 80 — below that, no scaled score is issued at all.

KS2 SATs 2026 Raw Score to Scaled Score Conversion Table

The table below sets out the three key conversion points published by the STA for 2026: the raw mark needed for scaled score 100 (expected standard), 110 (higher standard), and 120 (the maximum possible scaled score, reached before the raw mark ceiling in every subject).

Source: STA/GOV.UK, "2026 key stage 2 scaled score conversion tables", published 16 July 2026. These figures were cross-checked against independent SATs-sector reporting of the same tables and matched exactly on every raw mark listed above.

How Do the 2026 Thresholds Compare to 2025?

Comparing the 2026 conversion tables against the 2025 conversion tables (also published by the STA on GOV.UK) shows the raw mark needed for the expected standard fell slightly in all three tests this year — an indicator that the 2026 papers were, on balance, judged marginally harder than the 2025 papers, since a lower raw mark is needed to reach the same scaled-score standard.

The Reading paper saw the largest movement — a 3-mark fall in the expected-standard threshold — which typically corresponds to markers and moderators judging the 2026 Reading texts and question set to be the most demanding of the three tests relative to the prior year. Parents should be cautious about comparing a child's 2025 raw mark directly to a 2026 raw mark for this reason: the same raw mark can represent a different scaled score, and therefore a different standard, in different years. The scaled score, not the raw mark, is the only genuinely comparable figure year on year.

What Percentage of Pupils Met the Expected Standard in 2026?

National headline results for the 2026 KS2 SATs, also published in July 2026, show the following proportions of pupils meeting the expected standard (scaled score 100+, or the equivalent teacher-assessment judgement for Writing and Science):

The headline combined measure — the percentage of pupils meeting the expected standard in Reading, Writing and Maths simultaneously — rose one percentage point to 63% in 2026, up from 62% in 2025, but remains below the pre-pandemic 2018/19 baseline of 65%, and well above the pandemic-affected low of 59% recorded in 2022. Average scaled scores in 2026 were reported as 106 in Reading, 105 in Maths, and 105 in GPS — all essentially unchanged from 2025. Nationally, 28% of pupils (182,167 children) did not meet the expected standard in 2026, an improvement from 29.3% in 2025, while a further 9% of pupils were unable to meet the standard for other reasons, including working below the assessed curriculum or absence during the test window.

Is There a Scaled Score for Writing or Greater Depth?

No — and this is a common point of confusion for parents comparing KS2 SATs subjects. Reading, Mathematics and GPS are formal written tests, marked externally, and reported as a scaled score using the conversion tables above. Writing is different: it is not sat as a test at all. Writing is assessed continuously through Year 6 by the class teacher, using the Teacher Assessment Framework (TAF), and reported using one of three judgements — Working Towards the expected standard, Working at the Expected Standard, or Working at Greater Depth. There is no raw mark, no conversion table, and no numeric scaled score for Writing at any level, including Greater Depth. A teacher reaches a Greater Depth judgement by evaluating a body of a pupil's written work against the TAF's "pupil can" statements across a range of independent writing over the year — it is a professional judgement, not a test score, and it cannot be looked up in a conversion table the way Reading, Maths or GPS marks can. Nationally in 2026, 73% of pupils met the expected standard in Writing and 13% reached Greater Depth — a figure that has been essentially flat for five consecutive years, and well down on the pre-pandemic Greater Depth figure of 20%. For a fuller explanation of what Greater Depth means and how it is assessed, see our dedicated SATs Greater Depth guide.

What Do Scaled Scores of 100, 110 and 120 Actually Mean?

A scaled score of 100 is the pass/fail-style boundary used in national performance tables: at or above 100 is "met the expected standard"; below 100 is "did not meet the expected standard." A scaled score of 110 or above is described by the Department for Education as the "higher standard" — a separate accountability threshold from Greater Depth in Writing, applying only to the tested subjects (Reading, Maths and GPS) and covering roughly the top quartile to third of pupils nationally, depending on the subject and year. A scaled score of 120 is the ceiling of the scale; a pupil scoring 120 is not necessarily answering every question correctly, since in 2026 the maximum raw mark in Maths (110) sat one mark above the 120-threshold raw mark (109), meaning a single dropped mark at the very top of the paper still produced the maximum scaled score. At the bottom of the scale, a scaled score of 80 is the minimum reported score, requiring at least 3 raw marks in any test; a raw mark below that threshold receives no scaled score at all and is reported to schools as such rather than as a numeric figure.

How Is This Page Different From Our KS2 SATs Parent Guide?

Leading Tuition's KS2 SATs 2026 Complete Parent Guide covers the full picture for Year 6 parents — test dates, paper format and timings, how results affect secondary school setting, and preparation advice at home. This page is deliberately narrower: it exists purely as a numbers reference for the 2026 raw-to-scaled score thresholds, the year-on-year comparison against 2025, and the national attainment percentages, all checked directly against the STA's own published conversion tables rather than summarised secondhand. If you have already read the parent guide and want the underlying source figures behind the "scaled score 100" and "higher standard" language it uses, this page is the reference to bookmark; if you are starting from scratch, read the parent guide first for the fuller context.

How to Use These Thresholds to Support Your Child

Knowing the exact raw-mark threshold for a scaled score of 100 is most useful once a school shares a child's actual raw marks alongside the scaled score — most schools provide both figures in the results sent home in July. A child scoring 22/50 in Reading, for example, was 3 raw marks below the 2026 expected-standard threshold of 25/50 — a specific, addressable gap, rather than a vague sense of "below average." Because the threshold moves slightly each year, historical raw marks from older siblings or previous SATs papers should not be used as a direct benchmark for a 2026 result; only the scaled score is genuinely comparable across years. For families also preparing for the 11 plus alongside SATs, the Mathematics and Reading content overlaps substantially, and a child's KS2 SATs raw-mark gap analysis often maps directly onto the numerical and verbal reasoning weaknesses that show up in 11 plus practice papers, making combined preparation more efficient than treating the two exams separately.

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