Do SATs results matter when choosing a primary school?
SATs results are useful evidence and a poor single measure. They describe a cohort that has already left the school, they are heavily influenced by intake, and in a year group of thirty pupils one child moves the headline percentage by more than three points. Use them as one input among several, over two or three years, never as a ranking.
What the figures actually are
The headline is the percentage of Year 6 pupils reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths combined. Alongside it sit the percentage reaching the higher standard, average scaled scores in reading and maths, and progress measures comparing pupils with others who had similar Key Stage 1 starting points.
Progress is the measure most worth your attention: it is the closest thing published to what the school added, rather than what it admitted.
Why small cohorts distort everything
A one-form-entry primary has around thirty children in Year 6. Three children having a bad year is ten percentage points. Comparing a small school's single year against a national average, or ranking it against a three-form school, reads noise as signal.
Look at the same school across three years. A stable pattern is meaningful; a single dip usually is not.
What results cannot tell you
Nothing in the tables describes how a child who falls behind is caught up, how an able child is stretched, how behaviour is handled, or what happens for a child with additional needs. Those come out on a visit, and they are what most parents care about once their child is actually in the building.
Related questions
Are SATs results published for every primary school?
Not always. Results are withheld where a cohort is too small to publish without identifying individual children, and no results were published nationally for the years when assessments were cancelled. A blank is not a bad result.
What is a good KS2 score?
Compare against both the national figure and the local authority average for the same year rather than a fixed number. A school several points above its local average in a low-attaining area may be doing more for children than one slightly above national in an affluent one.
Do SATs results affect secondary school?
They inform initial setting decisions in Year 7 at many secondaries, but they do not determine admission to a non-selective school. Admission to a grammar school depends on a separate eleven-plus test.
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