The floor standard for primary schools has been announced today by the government.

The Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed that that floor standard will be the same as last year, with attainment element set at 65 per cent of pupils meeting the expected standard in the reading, writing and maths in the KS2 Sats and the progress scores set at -5 in reading, -5 in maths and -7 in writing.

Source: DfE

But it adds that the coasting definition, which is based on three years of data, will be confirmed later in the autumn.

Schools will be given their individual progress scores today, which will indicate whether they are above the government’s floor standard or not.

If a school falls below the floor standard, it could be turned into an academy, or if already an academy, have a change of sponsor.

But the government has said that no single piece of data will be used to determine any decision on intervention.

The DfE has also published a table showing the distribution of schools’ provisional progress scores. Schools below the progress element of the floor standard in an individual subject will be in the bottom five per cent of that subject.

Distribution of schools’ provisional progress scores

Source: DfE

This year, nationally, 61 per cent of 10- and 11-year-old pupils reached the expected standard in all of reading, writing and maths. This was a rise from 53 per cent in 2016. 

The KS2 Sats local authority statistics were also published today and show that the variation between authorities’ results has closed since last year, but the gap is still described as “considerable” by the DfE. The widest gap is in reading, where the minimum percentage was 61 per cent of pupils reaching the expected standard and the maximum was 86 per cent.

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