Winning the year 6 game
3 November 2026
Hear me out
We could discuss the merits of having SATs in Year 6 for hours. Days in fact. Should we be explicitly preparing the children for them? Whose responsibility is it to prepare the children? Do they matter? Should they matter? Should the exist at all? We probably all have different views on those questions. But the reality is that they are here and these are the current rules of the game. Next May, around 700,000 pupils in England will sit their SATs. How they perform will matter, for their teachers, and for their schools and most of the children will care about how they do. So, if these are the rules of the game, there will be thousands of teachers and senior leadership teams across the country searching for ways to better support their children and in turn boost their results.
Ultimately, it is the children who are the real winners of the game, as they leave our schools fully prepared for secondary. At my current school, we have been historically pretty good at playing the SATs game. We have sat above the national average for a long time, without narrowing our curriculum. In the two years I’ve been in Year 6, I’m really proud to say that we’ve results that put us amongst the best scores in the county. The year groups haven’t been without their challenges though, we are known locally for the way we include children with SEND. Consequently, we have a high proportion of children with SEND in each year group. Let’s get straight to it: how do we do win the Year 6 game?
A note before we start
Rule 1 – Start early and have a plan
May rolls around quickly, some years far too quickly for my liking. We have a long term plan and whilst it changes year on year, we make sure the curriculum is covered by May. Sure, we might miss small parts that will only ever be a mark or two, I’m looking at you converting between imperial and metric measurement (don’t worry we come back to it after May). However, if you find you’ve arrived at February and you’ve still got fractions and decimals, shape, measure etc to cover, it isn’t going to work. At my school, we are checking this plan constantly. If we need an extra week on commas in a list, that is fine. But we are going to squeeze it into the long term plan and ensure we still have time to teach everything else. This one document is almost always open on my computer somewhere.
Whilst creating the long term plan, build in revision time throughout the year and more after Easter. You will see my thoughts on narrowing the curriculum below. After Easter, I will admit, school is a little boring for the weeks until Sats (normally 3 max). This is balanced with us massively widening the curriculum as soon as the week is over. However, we are really good at building in revision time constantly throughout the year. Spare 5 minutes whilst you do the register, every morning and afternoon? Hello targeted arithmetic practice. 15 minutes before lunch each day? 3/4 spelling rules are being hit, hard. The one complaint we always have in team Y6 is there is never enough time. Life is fast paced in our classrooms but every minute is accounted for and purposeful all building towards this one goal. You can see our weekly timetable for T1 here.
Rule 2 – Get everyone onside in September
As I said at the start, Sats is not just a Year 6 teacher’s responsibility. You are going to need the whole community working alongside you to get the best results. In the run up to Sats week, SLT often starts with an update on Year 6 and what support we need. You need to be clear with the whole SLT team right at the start of the year, what do you need from them? How can they help you? What are their expectations? Can they run a group for you (see Rule 5)?
Schools also only have children in the building for a relatively few number of hours each day and days each year. You can not solve this alone – you need parents to buy in and 99% of them will if they know and understand the expectations and what we are working towards. Consequently, We hold a parent information evening early on in the year. In this, we are clear about what Sats are, where there child is academically at the start of the year, and homework (and how this helps them prepare for secondary). We also phone parents regularly after assessments. This can either be for either the great celebratory news or the less celebratory, can you work with your child on X please because they are finding it really tricky.
I will discuss getting children on side in rule 4.
Rule 3 – Track everything
And I mean everything. We look at everything from practice test results, to reading speeds, to spelling tests across the year, to question level analysis up to 5 times a year. All of this data will help you to build a picture and tailor your support and teaching – I even build my seating plans around this data. It is really important you set up a data tracking sheet early – ours is going from their last set of data in Y5. You can find a copy of it here and it has some little wizardry to calculate percentages etc.
Whilst tracking everything, we meet with our executive head every six weeks. For some, I know this would send a cold shiver down your spine but we are really lucky that he is only there to support us and the children. These meetings are often focusing on who needs support, what are we giving them? Who is smashing it? Who do we need to monitor? What is their barrier to learning? These sessions are vitally important for several reasons.
- Meeting every six weeks means no child is under-performing or falling behind for long before they are highlighted and a plan put in place.
- It provides a different view point, from someone who has been there and seen it themselves. We live and breath these children every day. Sometimes you need someone to take a step back and say have you thought of this?
- It allows us to sing about the children who are doing incredibly well.
- Everyone is in the loops and (touch wood) there haven’t been any May time surprises so far.
Rule 4 – Turn it into a team game with the children
There are two key words in Rule 4: team and game. Almost all children love games and those that love games, love to win at games even more. Therefore, we try to turn a lots of practice into games and there is always a prize to be won – 5 minutes extra play, a sticker, biscuits, dances – nothing major.
We run practice papers 4 times a year, which I know will make some uneasy. However, by the time mid-year rolls around, the vast majority of children are simply focused on beating their last score or getting 100%. They just see it as a game, something to win and be successful in. Furthermore, by the time May comes around, they are so use to them, it’s just another paper and they know they are successful at them.
We know that the class class achieves more if everyone is working together. For this reason, a lot of the games and challenges are completed as a whole class or in pairs. I have some examples of games we play below to try and help illustrate this point.
- We play Maths Bot a lot (it often becomes a little bit of an obsession). However, its always a game. How many correct answers can we get as a class in 15 minutes (answer normally over 500). Which pair can score 40/40 first (I’ll choose who in the pair can hold the pencil so one person dosn’t become redundant whilst the other flies through the Q’s). How many 40/40’s can we get as a class first time of asking (somewhere near 20/30). All of these records are written up on the board at the front of the classroom.
- Each morning starts with 5 maths questions on the board based on what the children need to work on. The record for number of children getting each question correct questions is written on the board. If we beat the record, we ring the winner’s bell – loudly, just to annoy the neighbours. If we get 30/30 on any question we get some extra play. But it must be 30 – no excuses.
- We hold several pub quizzes later in the year focusing all around the curriculum.
Rule 5 – run extra groups and run them early
Extra groups are controversial, I know. The extra pressure on both children and teachers. However, the growth and progress we see in these groups every single year makes it some of the most worth-while teaching we do. Also, the children do love it (and the occasional early morning biscuit) because they want to be the best they can be. We have spent years telling them if they practice anything they will achieve. Last year, I made the last week of term optional. I still had a group of 21 rock up Monday morning.
If you are going to do them, they must be frequent, start early in the year and, preferably, early in the day. Where I currently teach, we run our maths groups from October half-term, 8:00-8:45 Monday – Wednesday, with the same children attending all three. SPAG starts after Christmas. Every year I meet teachers who are starting the groups once a week after February half-term. This year that would be 8-9 hours of practice. Meanwhile children at my school we will be offered 49.5 extra hours for Maths and 18 for SPAG this year.
Everyone has been there, trying to force some Roman aqueduct knowledge down the children’s throats at 14:45 on a Wednesday afternoon – not exactly a highlight of my week. So why would fraction practice and hour later be any different? Get them in early, whilst their wide awake and eager – just grab an extra coffee on your way past the staff room. Going back to my previous point about getting everyone onboard, one group is always run by the head of school and deputy, whilst the Year 6 team share the other. No class teacher can (should) run three early morning a week. This is a load which must be shared. If you’re a Year 6 teacher who is worried about trying to get your SLT onboard – show them this blog and tell them to get in touch.
Finally, don’t cancel these groups. I try to never simply cancel the sessions because I can’t make it. At some point last year, the head of KS2 took a couple of sessions or my partner teacher ran some of mine. So many adults stepped up to the plate, it would be tricky to name them all. In my eyes, cancelling them sends the wrong message.
A couple of extra tips for running the groups –
- We offer free breakfast club places for all siblings. Parents love it, siblings get to play with their mates and its a barrier to access which has been broken down at no cost to the school.
- These are small groups, exclusive invite only. we try to keep the numbers below 20 and they are split based on ability. There is very little point having someone, who you want to score 110+, spending their mornings practicing addition with 4 digits.
- We don’t call it Sats boosters. We all know they are, the children all know they are, the parents all know they are. However, by calling it Maths groups and SPAG groups, I think it gives the emphasis that we are trying to build champion mathematicians and writers not someone who can simply pass a test.
- To make the most out of them, have a plan. Go back to the data what do the individuals attending need.
Rule 6 – Be prepared to celebrate the success
The best part of all this is about celebrating the successes and there will be many along the way. Seeing that child’s face when they score 100 scaled for the first time, knowing all their hard work is paying off, watching them dance and high-five their friends, these moments bring out such a special feeling. The children have worked hard for these moments, go over the top, bring the biscuit tin and stickers out, dance with them and enjoy the moment – show them you are proud of them.
We have a 100% club – children who score 100% in any paper. They are often found legging it down the corridor, paper in hand trying desperately to find the head teacher. Year 6 children often start the year thinking it isn’t possible, no way am I joining the 100% club. However, as soon as the first one achieves it, everyone knows its possible and it’s suddenly a goal for a large group of children. In 2023 and 2024, during the final paper, 13 children achieved this in Arithmetic both years, with a further 13 falling 1 mark short each year. Sure the standard is unbelievably high but I’m yet to meet a child who scores 39 or 40 on an arithmetic test and not make the standard over all, although I am sure they are out there. As an aside, I have never correctly predicted the members of this club – there are always 3 or 4 surprises throughout the year.
Rule 7 – Don’t narrow the curriculum
I don’t really have a lot to say about this apart from there are two reasons why we try at all times to provide abroad and balanced curriculum:
1 – narrowed curriculums puts children off. Yes Sats are important but children still deserve all the other learning that makes primary schools wonderful places.
2 – Ofsted want broad and balanced curriculums and that doesn’t stop when they get into year six. It doesn’t matter how good your results are if the children are missing every other subject.
Sure, in the last three weeks (after Easter) we break this slightly. But, until that point, the weekly plan doesn’t change – the children need it all from P.E. to R.E. and its only fair we provide it.
This year
Hopefully, this has provided some insight into how we run things in Year 6. I firmly believe that it is a mixture of all these rules that have made us successful. Because of this, this blog was really difficult to write and order as everything seem so important, it all needed to come first.
Over the coming weeks, my partner teacher and I will write a couple of blogs for each subject in Year 6. However, in the mean time, please ask any specific questions on Social media or in the comments below.
