Submitting Teacher Assessment at KS2: What Home Educators Need to Know

If your child is approaching the end of Key Stage 2 and you're trying to understand how statutory assessment works — and what it means for families educating at home — you're not alone. The KS2 teacher assessment framework is primarily designed for maintained schools, but understanding it matters for home educators in two distinct ways: it tells you what age-appropriate expectations look like at Year 6, and it informs how you document your child's attainment if they ever return to school or sit external examinations.

What Statutory KS2 Teacher Assessment Actually Involves

In maintained schools in England, teacher assessment at Key Stage 2 takes place at the end of Year 6 (when children are typically 10 to 11 years old). Schools are required to submit teacher assessment judgements to the Standards and Testing Agency (STA) each May for:

• English writing — assessed entirely through teacher judgement against the KS2 Teacher Assessment Framework (TAF)
• Science — assessed through teacher judgement (no statutory test)

KS2 reading, mathematics, and grammar, punctuation, and spelling are assessed via statutory SATs tests, not teacher judgement alone.

When a school submits teacher assessment, the teacher must judge whether a pupil has met one of several attainment descriptors: "Working towards the expected standard," "Working at the expected standard," or "Working at greater depth." These descriptors are defined by the STA's KS2 Teacher Assessment Frameworks, which are updated periodically.

For home educators, this framework is not a statutory requirement. You are not required to submit teacher assessments to anyone. However, understanding the framework helps you benchmark your child's progress against national expectations, which can be useful if your child sits private examinations or transitions back into school.

Pre Key Stage Standards: When Standard Frameworks Don't Apply

The pre key stage standards sit below the main KS2 Teacher Assessment Frameworks and are used in schools for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) who are working below the standard of national curriculum assessments.

The STA publishes separate pre key stage standards for each key stage. At KS2, these are called the "Pre-Key Stage 2: pupils working below the national curriculum assessment standard" descriptors. They are grouped into seven performance descriptors (PKS1 through PKS7 for science, and equivalent descriptors for English and mathematics), arranged in ascending order of attainment.

For home educators with children who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) or additional needs, understanding these standards matters because:

1. Annual EHCP reviews may reference whether a child is working at pre key stage or key stage level, and your documentation should align with this language when communicating with local authorities or SEND specialists.
2. If your child re-enters mainstream education, schools will need to quickly understand their prior attainment level; well-documented records using recognizable descriptors speeds up this transition enormously.
3. Demonstrating progress to the LA is easier when you can show longitudinal movement through recognized attainment bands rather than only describing activities.

Why Home Educators Should Track Against These Frameworks (Even Without Submitting)

The word "submitting" in the phrase "submitting teacher assessment KS2" is specifically a school task. Home educators do not submit anything to the STA. But tracking your child's progress against these frameworks internally has significant practical value.

Local authority EHE officers are trained within a school assessment culture. When you write your annual educational provision report — the document you send in response to an informal LA enquiry — using recognizable assessment language signals that you understand age-appropriate educational expectations. You do not need to reference the TAF by name, but phrases like "working confidently at the expected level for literacy" or "making strong progress in written numeracy" translate your home-based observation into language the LA recognises.

The KS2 English writing TAF, for example, requires that pupils demonstrate specific skills across a body of work: using a range of sentence structures for effect, maintaining consistent use of tense, organising writing into paragraphs, and applying taught punctuation correctly. If your Year 6-age child is working on persuasive writing, nature journal entries, and project reports, you can map this to the TAF descriptors in your own internal records without ever formally "submitting" anything.

Documenting Attainment for the LA Without Overstepping

One of the most common pitfalls home-educating families make when writing annual reports is either over-sharing (sending scanned workbooks, photographs, or physical samples) or under-sharing (vague descriptions that give the LA nothing concrete to assess). The right balance is to describe what the child has done and how it demonstrates progress.

For a child at the end of KS2 age, a well-documented report might include:

• A list of literacy resources used (e.g., CGP KS2 English workbooks, Oak National Academy writing lessons, structured narration using historical texts)
• A summary of writing topics tackled and the skills practised within them
• A brief note on mathematical topics covered and the child's current fluency level
• Mention of any informal assessments used at home (e.g., past SATs papers used as practice, not as a formal requirement)

What you should never send is the raw workbooks, photographs of the child, or access to your digital portfolio platform. The role of the annual report is to tell — not show.

Assessment Templates That Reflect England's Framework

Keeping your own internal assessment records structured around the national framework makes writing LA reports significantly faster. Rather than starting from scratch each autumn when the enquiry letter arrives, you can draw directly from running records you've maintained throughout the year.

The England Portfolio & Assessment Templates are designed specifically for this workflow. They include an annual educational provision report template built around the language of Section 7 of the Education Act 1996, a subject-by-subject progress tracker aligned to key stage expectations, and a pre key stage attainment record for families with children who have additional needs. These tools let you document in real time and compile your LA report in under an hour — rather than spending a panicked weekend formatting a Word document from scratch.

Practical Steps for Home Educators

If your child is at KS2 age (Years 3 to 6, roughly ages 7 to 11), here is a straightforward approach to assessment documentation:

1. Download the current KS2 Teacher Assessment Frameworks from the STA website and read the "expected standard" descriptors for English writing and science. Use these as a benchmark, not a checklist.
2. Keep a running record of literacy and numeracy topics covered each half-term, noting specific skills practised.
3. Use informal assessments such as past KS2 SATs papers to get a sense of where your child sits against national expectations — but do not feel obligated to share these results with the LA.
4. For children working below key stage level, refer to the pre key stage standards to track progress through the performance descriptors and ensure your LA report uses language that reflects this accurately.
5. Write your annual report using examples (topics covered, resources used, skills developed) rather than samples (actual workbooks or test papers).

Understanding how statutory assessment works in England — even though it doesn't directly apply to you — gives you the vocabulary and confidence to document your child's education in a way that satisfies LA enquiries efficiently and keeps your family's autonomy intact.

See more United Kingdom homeschool guides →