Your SATs Story Starts Much Earlier

When SATs results arrive each summer, it’s natural to focus on Year 6.

After all, they’re the pupils who sat the tests, the teachers who carried the immediate responsibility, and the results that will shape improvement discussions in the months ahead.

SATs can feel like the final destination. The end point of primary education.

The moment when years of learning are distilled into a set of results.

But every destination is shaped by the journey that came before it.

And if SATs are the destination, perhaps school improvement begins by understanding the journey..

The Danger of Only Looking at the Ending

Imagine picking up a book, reading only the final chapter and believing you understand the whole story.

You might know how it ends, but you wouldn’t understand the twists, challenges and turning points that shaped the plot.

SATs results are much the same.

They tell us where pupils finished their journey, but not what happened along the way.

The most important lessons are often found in the chapters that came before.

Are we treating Seven Years of Learning as if it happened in a single year?

A recent article by Sophie Bartlett in Schools Week makes a compelling argument: The Key Stage 2 SATs should never be viewed solely through the lens of Year 6. The assessments measure knowledge, skills and understanding built across seven years of primary education, not just the final nine months before the tests. [schoolsweek.co.uk]

If that’s true, then SATs results tell a much bigger story.

They reflect years of curriculum decisions, classroom practice, intervention strategies and learning experiences across the whole school. The challenge for leaders is not simply understanding what pupils achieved, but understanding the journey that led to those outcomes.

The more powerful questions that we should we asking are…

Why did pupils perform well in some areas but not others?
Which aspects of the curriculum are consistently strong?
Where do misconceptions appear repeatedly?
Are current outcomes revealing issues that started years earlier?
What can we learn that will improve outcomes for future cohorts?

These are not Year 6 questions.

They are whole-school questions.

Because SATs results are not really a Year 6 story at all.

They are the story of a seven-year journey.

Every Journey Leaves Clues

Every SATs result contains clues about the journey pupils have taken through the curriculum.

A school may find that pupils are secure in arithmetic but struggle with reasoning. Reading outcomes may highlight strong retrieval skills but weaker inference. Grammar knowledge may be secure, while its application remains less developed.

The clues are there.

The challenge is finding them.

Without deeper analysis, valuable insights can remain hidden behind a headline figure. Question Level Analysis helps schools look beyond the destination and identify the barriers, detours and successful routes that shaped the journey.

Because the goal isn’t simply to understand where pupils arrived.

It’s to understand how they got there.

When Patterns Become Signposts

Individual questions matter.

Patterns matter more.

A pupil can make a mistake. A cohort can have an unusual strength or weakness. But meaningful school improvement rarely comes from isolated results. It comes from recognising patterns that emerge across subjects, pupil groups and, most importantly, over time.

A lower-than-expected reading score may initially appear to be a Year 6 issue. However, deeper analysis might reveal recurring weaknesses in vocabulary, inference or language comprehension that have been appearing for years. Equally, difficulties with mathematical reasoning may point to gaps in fluency or number sense that developed much earlier in pupils’ learning journeys.

Patterns help schools distinguish between:

A cohort issue and a curriculum issue
A one-off result and a recurring trend
Individual gaps and systemic weaknesses
Short-term interventions and long-term improvement priorities

This is why effective school leaders look beyond what happened this year and ask:

“Have we seen this before?”

When the same themes emerge repeatedly, they deserve attention. When strengths appear consistently, they should be protected and replicated.

The real power of Question Level Analysis is not identifying a weak question or topic. It is uncovering the patterns that reveal where the curriculum is working, where pupils need greater support and where improvement efforts should be focused.

Because patterns do more than tell a story.

They provide direction.

Following the Route Back: A Real Example

The power of this approach can be seen in the experience of Seely Primary and Nursery School.

Rather than accepting lower reading outcomes at face value, leaders wanted to understand why reading attainment consistently lagged behind mathematics. They used DAISI QLA Results to look beyond the destination and examine the journey that had led there.

The analysis revealed two clear barriers:

Pupils learning English as an additional language were struggling with vocabulary.
Inference was a significant weakness across the cohort.

Armed with this insight, the school took action. Vocabulary became a whole-school priority, additional support was introduced for EAL pupils, and staff received focused CPD on developing inference skills

The impact was significant. Reading attainment at the expected standard rose from 54% in 2016 to 68% in 2017 and then 79% in 2018. Over just two years, the school improved reading outcomes by 25 percentage points, turning a recognised area of weakness into a significant success story.

Case Study 1: How DAISI helped my School

Most importantly, this wasn’t the result of a last-minute Year 6 intervention.

It was a whole-school response to whole-school findings – the result of identifying a pattern, understanding the barriers behind it and taking targeted whole-school action.

The school didn’t simply analyse where pupils had arrived.

It used the clues from one cohort’s journey to improve the route for every cohort that followed.

School Improvement Starts Long Before Year 6

The barriers we see in Year 6 rarely begin in Year 6. Knowledge gaps, misconceptions and curriculum weaknesses often develop much earlier, only becoming visible at the end of a pupil’s primary journey. [schoolsweek.co.uk]

That’s why the most effective schools don’t simply ask:

“How do we improve next year’s SATs?”

They ask:

“How do we improve the journey that leads to them?”

By shifting the focus from the destination to the route pupils take through the curriculum, SATs become more than a result.

They become a signpost for future school improvement.

Mapping the Route for Future Cohorts

One year’s SATs results provide a snapshot. Several years of results provide a narrative.

One year’s SATs results provide a snapshot. Trends over time tell the story.

The most meaningful school improvement opportunities emerge not from a single cohort, but from patterns that appear year after year. A weaker reading result may be a one-off. Repeated weaknesses in the same area may point to a curriculum issue, a teaching priority or a gap in pupils’ learning experiences.

This is where Question Level Analysis becomes particularly valuable. By examining trends over multiple years, schools can begin to answer some of the most important improvement questions:

Are our actions having an impact?
Are weaknesses becoming strengths?
Are curriculum changes improving outcomes?
Which priorities should remain on our improvement plan?

The experience of Seely Primary and Nursery School demonstrates this perfectly. Their QLA identified recurring weaknesses in vocabulary and inference, leading to targeted whole-school action. Reading attainment rose from 54% to 79% over three years, showing the impact of identifying a pattern, acting upon it and monitoring progress over time.

Because while SATs measure what happened this year, patterns and trends reveal what is happening to your school.

And that is where the most valuable school improvement conversations begin.

The DAISI Difference

For more than 15 years, DAISI’s QLA Results Analysis has helped schools move beyond headline measures and uncover the deeper trends hidden within their SATs data. Our reports transform complex assessment data into clear, practical school improvement insights, helping leaders understand not only what happened, but why it happened and what to do next.

Schools constantly see measurable improvements in attainment, teaching quality and strategic decision‑making through our insight. And because our analysis has been used by schools for over a decade, the results are proven.

80% of schools who consistently used our analysis consistently over three years have seen improved attainment.

“A report that actually helps you decide what to do next. We’d looked at the DfE question-level data before, but it always felt like there was another layer of insight we weren’t getting to. Clear, detailed and genuinely useful. It turned a set of results into an action plan.“
Headteacher, Wirral School

Because when seven years count, every insight matters. QLA Results – Find out More

The Journey Doesn’t End with SATs

SATs may mark the end of a pupil’s primary journey, but they should never mark the end of a school’s learning.

The most effective leaders use results not as a verdict, but as a map.

They look beyond the destination, study the route that pupils have taken, and use those insights to make the journey even better for those who follow. Because meaningful school improvement begins when we stop asking where pupils arrived and start asking questions about how they got there.

Where did the journey run smoothly?

Where did pupils encounter obstacles?

Which paths consistently led to success?

And where might future cohorts need additional support along the way?

Because meaningful school improvement is not about judging the destination.

It is about understanding what needs to happen to help shape the journey ahead.

For every child who follows…

DAISI Education

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