11+ and KS2 SATs
The tests taken at the end of primary school in England — the national curriculum tests that Year 6 pupils in state-funded schools sit, and the selective-school entrance exam some of them sit as well.
Two tests, two entirely different purposes
KS2 SATs are national curriculum tests taken by every Year 6 pupil in state-funded schools in England, over four days in May. There are three subjects. English grammar, punctuation and spelling comes in two papers, one of short questions and one of spellings read aloud. English reading is one paper with a booklet of texts that get harder as you go. Mathematics has an arithmetic paper and two reasoning papers. Writing is assessed by the teacher rather than by a test, and there is no science test at the end of Key Stage 2.
Results come back as a scaled score rather than a mark. The scale runs from 80 to 120, and 100 is the expected standard — so a score of 100 or above means a pupil has met it. The scaled score exists because papers vary slightly in difficulty from year to year, and the conversion is set after the tests are marked so that the same standard means the same thing each year. Nothing about a child's secondary school place depends on these results; they are a measure of the school as much as of the pupil.
The 11+ is something else entirely. It is an entrance exam for selective state grammar schools and for some independent schools, usually sat in the September of Year 6 for grammar schools (independent schools often test in the January), months before the SATs, with preparation typically starting in Year 5. It is not a national test: there is no single 11+ paper, and what is examined varies by region and by school. The common elements are English, mathematics, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning, set by test providers on behalf of consortia of schools. Entry is competitive: scores are standardised against everyone who sat the test, some areas set a qualifying score, and in oversubscribed schools the places go to the highest scores or by the admissions criteria.
What this track covers, and what it cannot
Practice here covers KS2 mathematics, KS2 grammar, punctuation and spelling, and 11+ verbal reasoning.
Two things it does not. Non-verbal reasoning is a visual test — shapes, rotations, sequences of figures — and cannot be set as text, so nothing here rehearses it. And KS2 reading is a comprehension paper built on a booklet of full texts, which a question-and-answer format does not reproduce; the reading questions worth practising are the ones about a passage long enough to work with, which is a different exercise.
Where the official material is
Past KS2 test papers are published by the Standards and Testing Agency and are free to download from gov.uk. They are Crown copyright and released under the Open Government Licence, which means they may be reused with attribution — a genuinely unusual position among the exams in this catalogue, and worth knowing, because it means the real papers from recent years (none were set in 2020 or 2021) are legitimately available to you at no cost. Note one exclusion: the reading booklets contain extracts from books that remain the property of their publishers, and those extracts are specifically carved out of the licence.
The 11+ is the opposite case. Papers are produced commercially, are not published, and are fully protected — nothing of theirs is reproduced anywhere here. What is practised instead is the question shapes that recur, written fresh.
Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with the Standards and Testing Agency, with any 11+ test provider or with any school, and it is not an exam centre.
Key Stage 2 SATs are set by the Standards and Testing Agency (Department for Education); 11+ examinations are set by individual schools, local authorities and providers such as GL Assessment. Zestly is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. These materials are our own and reproduce no official paper.