New expectations Writing, maths and SPAG

Writing Increased focus on being grammatically accurate A wide range of sentence types is required Handwriting and spelling expectations have increased and are now crucial Writing must be independent to be used as evidence at end of KS2

Maths No mental maths paper: there is an arithmetic paper instead The others two papers are reasoning papers, testing deeper understanding of mathematical concepts No marks can be guessed any longer!

SPAG Focus on technical terms (e.g. fronted adverbials, subordinate clause, inverted comma, parentheses, apostrophe for omission, modal verb, synonym, antonym…) The marking is not overly generous: if you join your letters underneath an apostrophe, no mark.

New expectations The expectations have changed all of a sudden and have sharply increased The pass marks have not – and are not going to be – given until after the exams so it makes it difficult to report on how children are doing Children who may just have been doing fine are possibly now below age related expectation

Reporting at end of key stage Used to be a level (3,4,5) Now it is binary: at the standard or not Working at age-related expectation Working towards age-related expectation For writing, there is also working at the expected standard with greater depth