What Years 1 and 2 cover, which assessment is statutory (the phonics check) and which are optional (the KS1 tests, since 2023/24), what teacher assessment is, and what expected standard and greater depth mean.
5 min read
Key Stage 1 covers Year 1 and Year 2 in England, when children are aged 5 to 7. At this age, a lot of assessment is simply your child’s teacher keeping track of how they are getting on as the year goes by. There is one statutory check in Year 1, and there are some optional tests that a school may choose to use. This guide explains each part, what you can expect to hear from school, and a few simple things that help at home.
The big picture
Three things make up assessment in Years 1 and 2:
Teacher assessment, all year round. Teachers assess children through the year, and schools report on progress to parents.
The phonics screening check in June of Year 1. It is statutory, which means it is required rather than optional.
The KS1 tests in reading, maths, and grammar, punctuation and spelling. These are optional for schools from the 2023 to 2024 school year, so some schools use them and others do not.
None of these is something your child needs to get ready for in a big way. Most of what helps is calm, short, regular practice.
Teacher assessment: the everyday picture
This part goes on all year, quietly. Teacher assessment simply means your child’s teacher keeping track of how they are doing through the year, rather than judging everything on a single day.
Schools report on progress to parents. If you are not sure how or when your school does this, it is always fine to ask your child’s teacher.
The Year 1 phonics screening check
Phonics teaches children the sounds that letters make, and how to blend those sounds together to read words. The phonics screening check looks at how well your child can do this. It is statutory in Year 1 and takes place in June.
Here is how it works:
A teacher listens to your child read 40 words, one to one.
About half of the words are pseudo-words, often called “alien words”. These are made-up words, so your child cannot know them from memory.
That means the check is about decoding: working out a word by saying its sounds and blending them together. It is not checking how many words your child has learned by heart.
Alien words can look odd, but there is a good reason for them: a made-up word can only be read by sounding it out.
What the result means
The mark that meets the expected standard is published each year after the check. Your child’s school will tell you whether your child met it.
If your child does not meet it this time, they take the check again in Year 2. That is simply another go, with more time to practise in between.
The guide on the phonics screening check, here in the grown-ups area, goes into more detail and has ideas for practising without pressure.
The optional KS1 tests
There are three KS1 tests: reading, maths, and grammar, punctuation and spelling. They are optional for schools from the 2023 to 2024 school year. Schools that use them do so in May, and they use them to inform teacher assessment. In other words, the tests add one more piece of information to the picture the teacher has already built up over the year.
Where they are used, results are given as scaled scores: numbers on a set scale from 85 to 115, where 100 is the expected standard. If your child’s school uses the tests and you would like to understand a result, the class teacher is the best person to explain it.
Because the tests are optional, your child may never sit them. The easiest way to find out is to ask the school.
What you will be told
Pulling this together:
The phonics screening check: your school tells you whether your child met the expected standard.
Progress through the year: schools report on progress to parents.
The KS1 tests: if your school uses them, ask your child’s teacher how they fit into what the school shares with you.
Try to treat any result at this age as a snapshot of one moment: a starting point for what to work on next. It does not tell you who your child is, or what they will go on to do.
Helping at home this week
You do not need workbooks or a strict timetable. Little and often, kept light and fun, is the aim.
Read together for ten minutes a day. Let your child sound out the words they can, and read the trickier ones for them. Talk about the pictures and what might happen next.
Play sound games. “I spy something beginning with mmm” helps your child listen for the sounds in words. Say the sound on its own, “mmm”, rather than “muh”.
Count real things. Steps on the stairs, apples in the fruit bowl, coins in a purse. Adding and taking away with objects in front of them makes numbers feel real.
Notice the effort. “You sounded that out really carefully!” tells your child what they did well.
Keep tests low-key. There is no need to talk about the phonics check or the KS1 tests as big events. If your child mentions one, a calm “Tell me about it” is plenty.
Using Courselo alongside school
Practice papers for Key Stage 1 sit in the grown-ups area. They are meant to be done together: read aloud and untimed. Scores are approximate, because the papers are objective-only (every question has a fixed answer).
Stars (1 to 3 per topic) are earned by answering and never taken away. In the grown-ups area they read as Working towards, Expected and Greater depth. They are Courselo’s own guide to how each topic is going, not the school’s judgement.
Needs a hand, in the grown-ups area, gives a tip for each topic, so you can pick one small thing to try this week.
Practice like this helps, and it works best in small, cheerful doses alongside the reading and chatting you already do together.