What is Key Stage 1?

What is Key Stage 1?

Key Stage 1 (KS1) comes after the Early Year Foundation Stage (EYFS)  and is part of the National Curriculum. It is the legal term for the two years of schooling in maintained primary schools in England and Wales and begins at age 5 in Year 1 and ends after 2 years when pupils complete Year 2.

What is on the Key Stage 1 curriculum?

The three core subjects taught at Key Stage 1 are English, Maths and Science. Design Technology, History, Geography, Art & Design, Music, PE, Computing and Languages are Foundation Subjects which are also taught at KS1.  All maintained schools are also required to teach Religious Education though it is not part of the National Curriculum and parents have the right to withdraw children from these lessons.

What are the overseas equivalents of Key Stage 1?

We bring teachers from mainly these places into the country to take up teaching jobs in the UK.  The names given to comparable education stages in these places are

What happens on completion of Key Stage 1?

During the month of May in their second year pupils take Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) in which they’re tested on their

• English reading (maximum score of 40)
• English grammar, punctuation and spelling (maximum score of 40), and
• Maths (maximum score of 60)

Tests are marked by teachers from the students’ schools and are scored with a raw score. These raw scores are then converted into a ‘scaled score’ showing how well pupils have done against an expected score of 100. Those with a mark of over 100 have exceeded expectation and those with less are still working towards achieving it.

How are Key Stage 1 SAT results used?

SATs results for KS1 are used as an evaluation measure rather than the traditional, black and white of exam pass or failure. In other words they’re used to indicate where pupils are achieving well and where they might need extra help and support going into Key Stage 2 and Year 3.

Teachers also combine SATs results with pupils’ work throughout the year to inform the individual assessments they create for each student.

To learn more about the detail of the Key Stage 1 National Curriculum click here and here for our blog on Key Stage 2.

To see the huge variety of Key Stage 1 teaching jobs and support jobs we’ve got click here. IK based teachers or teaching assistants can pre-register with us here and overseas teachers and support staff here.