...How confident are you that your learners are really ready for their SATs?
We’ve just hit SATs season, and we can guarantee that every educator across the county has asked themselves this exact question at least once over the past few weeks. It’s a tough one: despite how well you’ve organised, taught and supported your learners, not even the most intensive Year 6 SATs preparation plan can completely free you from those excruciating summer exam worries.
The pressure is on to deliver the best results possible, but with rising targets, Covid catch-up and budgets having to stretch further than ever before, the stakes are high, and learner energy is low. So, what kind of grade landscape are we actually looking at in terms of achievement in 2024… and how can we use assistive technology to hack the exam process in 2025?
Reading standards are down for Year 6 learners.
Only 73% of learners achieved the expected standard in 2023, a fact that most sources attribute to extended pandemic learning disruption.
2024 sees another cohort of SAT-takers who have seen significant disruption during the literacy acquisition process due to the pandemic. They were six and seven years of age when the first school closures happened, and it’s a vital point on the reading journey: ideally, they’d have been developing the ability to read books independently, self-correct and foster understandings of emphasis and expression, but missing out on in-person instruction saw many fall behind previous skill expectations.
Even before lockdowns and school closures, the number of pupils leaving primary school unable to read fluctuated from around 20% in 2005 to just under half in 2016. We know that the pandemic has cost our learners a lot in terms of reading progress and learning confidence. Some Year 7 learners join their secondary schools with reading ages of four and five due to lost reading progress, and many in UK education are beginning to worry that we’ve only begun to see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to long-term impacts on learning.
That’s before we consider the reading progress impacts of growing material deprivation, the youth mental health crisis, and rapidly declining hobby reading in children and young people.
So, no matter how rigorous your Year 6 SATs preparation plan for 2024 might be, we know that they’ve been facing far more of an uphill battle with reading than they were half a decade ago.
…Here’s how 2025 can be different. ⬇️
Your alternative Year 6 SATs preparation plan for 2025
When their reading skills need work, and they’re struggling to understand everything on the test paper, learners have a harder time reaching their potential in exams.
In this blog, we’re going to explore some of the most common factors that impact learner outcomes in SATs and take a closer look at how next year, we’ve got the opportunity to upgrade our SATs preparation plan and create an exam hall where each and every learner in your class can head into test season with confidence.
And making a difference is as simple as getting a reading pen into your classrooms and exam halls. We’ll explain:
Wait. What's a reading pen?
A reading pen is an assistive technology device that allows learners to listen to the words on the page. Just move the pen’s scanner across the line of text to hear it relayed via audio thorough a discreet pair of headphones. They’re especially helpful for learners with dyslexia and students with English as an Additional Language, but they’re often used across whole classrooms in primary schools to support the literacy acquisition process.
Scanning Pens has been empowering learners with the award-winning C-Pen Reader 2 as a classroom reading aid for years and, more recently, as an exam-time reading support in its Exam Lock mode. Learners also have the option to use a C-Pen Exam Reader 2, a pure exam-time reading support, with no built-in storage or access to dictionaries as standard.
They’re both approved for use by JCQ during Year 6 SATs tests except for the reading paper as centre-delegated access arrangements. So, when a C-Pen Reader 2 is used in class as a Normal Way of Working, it ensures that learners can experience the same high level of reading support in the exam hall as they have done all year.
And here’s how a reading pen can change the story...
There’s a big difference on the day when a reading pen has been part of your prep. Here’s just a small insight into the kind of changes that building a device like the C-Pen Reader 2 or the C-Pen Exam Reader 2 into your Year 6 SATs preparation plan could make…
❌ High-stakes reading whilst the clock is ticking
We know that one in three learners didn’t finish their paper last year. Unsurprisingly, even the most dedicated Year 6 SATs preparation plan can’t fully prepare students for the time deficit caused by struggling to read the questions. And not finishing the paper means a lot of lost marks that they might have been able to nab.
✅ Reading faster, more calmly, and more accurately
Nobody knows what’s inside the test booklet until the day of the exam, so it’s impossible to prepare learners for everything. What we can do, however, is ensure that they’re feeling confident and capable whatever happens. When they head into the exam hall with a reading pen, they’ve got the power to tackle whatever those papers entail in a calm and confident way that helps them read more accurately, independently, and fully understand what they’re being asked.
❌ Gambling with recall and comprehension under pressure
Sometimes, all it takes is one tricky word to undermine their confidence or one misremembered word that can change their interpretation of a whole set of questions. And that’s a lot of potential for lost marks, especially if they’re already feeling a little stressed.
✅ Fostering better understanding with multi-modal support
We understand words better when we’re not experiencing cognitive overload. Stressed brains are forgetful brains! But for learners with low literacy, those with dyslexia or those who have come to study in English from other language backgrounds, that’s the reality of being presented with a passage of text in timed, high-pressure reading conditions.
Multi-modal support means that we’re supporting their recall and understanding by lightening the cognitive load and ensuring that they can focus on what’s important: answering the questions and unlocking their target grades.
❌ Struggling to read with confidence under exam-hall pressure
It’s distressingly common that a struggling reader decides that they’re going to fail an exam long before they head into the exam hall: if they’ve received disappointing grades in class tests and mocks due to weak reading, it’s hard to walk into the real thing feeling confident and hopeful.
And that’s a recipe for low marks across the board: if that’s all they believe they’re capable of, then that’s often all they’ll set out to achieve, missing out on their true potential.
✅ Discreet, reliable support that’s easily within arm’s reach
Confidence isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a vital component of a successful exam and learning formula and ensures that learners have the self-belief to trust in their own understandings, skills, and the ability to build on past performance. If they’ve got reading support on the desk that they trust to help them access the questions independently, the door is open to achievement because they believe in their own ability and know that reading needs can’t hold them back.
❌ Human reading support that puts a strain on an already tight budget
We know that there’s been a £10 billion fall in real-terms school funding since 2010-11, and that educators are worried about the cost of exam support. Human readers can cost upwards of £15 an hour, and when the number of students who are seeking our neurodiversity support is rising, that means schools are paying out more than ever before.
There’s a demand issue, too: many schools are finding that they need more human readers than they can recruit, which can easily put even the best thought-out Year 6 SATs preparation plan into jeopardy.
✅ An affordable, reusable and rechargeable one-time purchase
When a school chooses a reading pen, they’re making a cost-effective one-time purchase. There’s no subscription, no waiting list, no ongoing salaries, and the durable design can serve cohort after cohort of learners… freeing up budget in an era where most schools are keeping an eye on every penny.
❌ Learners leaving primary school with low marks and low confidence
Let’s say that their Year 6 SATs preparation plan hasn’t exactly gone to… plan. Learners may have struggled during their SATs, and gone on to receive disappointing grades to head into secondary school with.
Low marks like these aren’t just upsetting for students, they’re also a recipe for ongoing low achievement and low self-esteem: if no exam coping strategy has been put in place, then the next exams they take can often follow the same pattern. And when they’re headed into a setting where teachers don’t know them or necessarily have a good understanding of their potential, it can lead to things like being placed in a lower set and grade targets being set too low.
✅ Heading into secondary school with their heads held high
Better Year 6 SAT grades do mean a better start in secondary school. It’s never too late for a learner to turn things around and start making progress, but going in with strong grades that accurately reflect their abilities keeps their confidence high, keeps their target grades high, and avoids the development of low self-esteem and anti-school sentiments.
And having experienced an effective Year 6 SATs preparation plan where they’ve got reading support at their fingertips and the information noted down on their EHCP means that both students and educators know how to address exam prep going forward too.
It’s not too late to take their Year 6 SATs preparation plan into the exam hall in 2024!
If your learners have been using a reading pen in class this year and it’s established as their Normal Way of Working, then they can use either an exam-locked C-Pen Reader 2 or a C-Pen Exam Reader 2 in all of their SATs except for the reading paper.
How an assistive-tech forward Year 6 SATs preparation plan could slow grade decline
Research released by academics at Strathclyde University, Exeter University and the London School of Economics indicates that GCSE results will get much worse over the next decade.
Grades are set to slip further down the scale the younger GCSE-takers were when pandemic school closures happened, predicting that by 2030 (when GCSE-takers were 4 or 5 when the pandemic hit), fewer than 40% of pupils in UK schools will achieve a good standard in GCSE maths and English. And it doesn’t stop at exam attainment, either – these poor GCSE showings are estimated as likely to cost that cohort over £31 billion in lifetime earnings.
Put a class pack of reading pens at the heart of your Year 6 SATs preparation plan!
That’s why having the right classroom and exam-time reading support is vital if learners are to beat the curve. It’s not just about those with dyslexia, low literacy or EAL anymore: it’s about every student in those Covid-era cohorts, who now need extra support to catch up and read confidently long before they reach GCSE level.
When we roll out reading pens across the primary classroom, we’re not just helping beat the stigma that’s still sometimes associated with utilising assistive technology. We’re also ensuring that no learner gets left behind, whether they’re neurodivergent, still working towards English fluency, or just got caught up in the extended reading loss that the global COVID-19 situation facilitated. And that means they’re ready for GCSEs when they happen, with stronger skills and assistive technology support strategies that can carry them through to a brighter reading, learning and working future.
➡️ Learn more about our 10-pen C-Pen Reader 2 Class Packs here!
