KS2 SATs 2027 Dates: The Full Week Timetable

In short

• KS2 SATs are sat over four days, Monday to Thursday, in the week containing the second Monday in May — which for 2027 points to Monday 10 to Thursday 13 May.
• That window follows the pattern the Standards and Testing Agency has used consistently (13-16 May 2024, 12-15 May 2025, 11-14 May 2026), but the 2027 timetable must be confirmed against the STA's published version on gov.uk.
• The usual running order is grammar, punctuation and spelling on Monday, reading on Tuesday, and the three maths papers across Wednesday and Thursday.
• Results reach primary schools in early July and are passed to parents before the end of the summer term, so there is no long wait over the holidays.
• Unlike the 11+, SATs do not decide secondary school admission — they measure whether a child met end-of-Key-Stage-2 expectations and are often used for setting in Year 7.

When are the KS2 SATs in 2027?

The KS2 SATs are sat over four consecutive days, Monday to Thursday, in the week that contains the second Monday in May. Applying that rule to 2027 gives an expected window of Monday 10 May to Thursday 13 May 2027. That is a projection from a very stable pattern rather than a figure copied from an official timetable, so treat it as a planning assumption and confirm it against the Standards and Testing Agency's published assessment timetable on gov.uk before booking anything around it. The pattern itself has held firmly in recent years: 13-16 May in 2024, 12-15 May in 2025, and 11-14 May in 2026 — each of them the Monday-to-Thursday block beginning on the second Monday of the month. The tests are statutory, which means every state-funded primary in England administers them in that same national window; individual schools cannot move them, and there is no alternative sitting for children who are simply absent, though there is a short window for schools to administer papers to pupils who miss a day for an unavoidable reason.

The day-by-day 2027 paper timetable

The order of papers across the four days has been consistent for several years, and there is no indication it is changing. Monday is English grammar, punctuation and spelling: Paper 1 is the questions paper, lasting around 45 minutes, and Paper 2 is the spelling test, an aural paper of roughly 15 minutes in which 20 words are read aloud in sentences. Tuesday is English reading — a single paper of about an hour in which children read three texts of increasing difficulty and answer questions on all three, with the time split entirely at their own discretion, which is why pacing practice matters more here than anywhere else in the week. Wednesday brings mathematics Paper 1, the arithmetic paper, around 30 minutes of pure calculation with no word problems at all, followed by mathematics Paper 2, the first reasoning paper, at roughly 40 minutes. Thursday closes the week with mathematics Paper 3, the second reasoning paper, also around 40 minutes. Writing is not externally tested at all — it is assessed by the child's teacher across the year, drawing on a portfolio of work rather than a single timed piece.

When do the 2027 SATs results come out?

Results are returned to primary schools in early July, and schools pass them to parents before the end of the summer term — so families normally have them in hand well before the holidays begin, rather than waiting through August. Each child receives a scaled score for reading, for maths, and for grammar, punctuation and spelling, alongside a teacher assessment judgement for writing. The scaled score converts the raw mark into a common scale that runs from 80 to 120, where 100 is the expected standard: a child scoring 100 or above has met the expected standard for the end of Key Stage 2, and a score below 100 means they have not, though the gap is often small and rarely as significant as it feels on the day. Scaled scores exist because raw papers vary slightly in difficulty year to year, so a raw mark on its own would not be comparable across cohorts. Our KS2 SATs parent guide walks through how the scaling works in more detail, along with what each paper actually assesses.

What should parents actually do before May?

Considerably less than the anxiety around SATs suggests. These are curriculum assessments that schools prepare children for directly and thoroughly through Year 6 — the entire spring term is, in most schools, oriented around them. Heavy additional drilling at home tends to add stress without adding marks, and it can sour a child's relationship with subjects they were previously fine about. Where home support genuinely helps is in the background habits that lift everything: regular independent reading, secure times tables, and confident written methods for the four operations. If your child is anxious rather than underprepared, a small amount of familiarisation with the paper format helps more than extra content — knowing that the arithmetic paper contains no word problems, or that they control their own time across the reading paper's three texts, removes surprises. Beyond that, protect sleep in the run-up, keep the week itself boringly normal, and resist the urge to debrief each paper in forensic detail; children remember the questions they found hard far better than the many they answered correctly.

Do the 2027 SATs affect secondary school places?

No. This is the single most common misunderstanding, and it is worth being unambiguous about. SATs results play no part in secondary school admission — that is decided entirely by the Common Application Form you submit to your local authority by 31 October of Year 6, and by each school's published admissions criteria. Where selective schools are involved, entry is decided by a separate 11+ test sat the previous autumn, long before SATs happen. The two assessments serve completely different purposes: the 11+ is a competitive selection test, while SATs are a statutory measure of whether pupils met national expectations, reported to the Department for Education and used to hold schools to account. What SATs results *are* frequently used for is setting once a child arrives in Year 7 — many secondaries use them alongside their own baseline testing to place children in ability groups, which is a fair reason to take them seriously without treating them as a gate. Our guide to SATs and the 11+ in the same year covers how grammar-school families sequence the two.

How do the 2027 SATs fit alongside 11+ preparation?

For families pursuing grammar school entry, the timing is genuinely convenient rather than conflicting. The 11+ is sat in September at the very start of Year 6; the SATs land the following May, eight months later. That means the two never compete for the same preparation window: 11+ work belongs to Year 5 and the summer before Year 6, and once it is done the field is clear for school-led SATs preparation in the spring. The two also share a large curriculum foundation — both draw on Key Stage 2 maths and English — so the fluency, comprehension and vocabulary built for the 11+ transfer directly, and 11+ candidates usually arrive at SATs comfortably placed without a separate campaign. What does not transfer is the reasoning content: verbal and non-verbal reasoning appear on 11+ papers and nowhere in the SATs. The practical sequence is to front-load 11+-specific reasoning before September, then let the school carry the spring. Our 11+ and SATs juggling guide sets out that sequencing in full, and the revision timetable guide covers the Year 5 half.

Where GrammarPrep fits

GrammarPrep spans Key Stage 2 through the 11+ on a single child profile, which means the maths and English fluency a child builds for one is measured and carried into the other rather than restarted. For SATs specifically, the adaptive engine works from demonstrated accuracy by topic, so practice targets whatever is actually costing marks instead of re-covering ground the child already holds — which is the difference between useful spring practice and the generic worksheet drilling that mostly adds stress. The free 15-minute diagnostic maps a starting profile across maths and English in one sitting, and is a reasonable way to check whether a Year 6 child is genuinely on track for the expected standard before the spring term gets busy.