Start here: your SATs do not choose your secondary school
This is the single thing most Year 6s get wrong, so it is worth being completely clear about.
In England, secondary school places are offered on 1 March, while you are still in Year 6. SATs happen in May. Your place was decided, offered and accepted months before you sat a single paper. There is no version of these tests where doing badly loses you your school place, and no version where doing brilliantly wins you a different one.
So what are they for? Mostly they are used to check how well primary schools are doing — they measure the school at least as much as they measure you. Your results are passed on to your secondary school in July, and some schools use them as one early clue about which class or set to put you in. One clue, in July, that they will have replaced with their own information by Christmas.
Worth doing well in? Sure. Worth losing sleep over? Genuinely not.
What actually changes
Primary and secondary are different in a handful of specific, concrete ways. None of them are hard. They are just new, and new is tiring for the first few weeks.
Lots of teachers, not one
Instead of one teacher who knows everything about you, you get a different specialist for every subject — often ten or more. They will not all know your name in week one. That is normal, and it is not a sign anything is wrong.
You move, the teacher stays
Rooms belong to subjects. You will walk to maths, then to science, then across the site to PE. You will get lost in the first fortnight. So will everybody else in your year, including the confident-looking ones.
A timetable to keep track of
Different days have different lessons, and some schools run a two-week timetable where Week A and Week B are not the same. You get a planner or an app. Checking it the night before is the whole skill.
A much bigger building
A big primary has maybe 400 children. A typical secondary has 1,000 or more. It feels enormous for about three weeks and then it feels like nothing, because you will only actually use a handful of routes through it.
Homework from several subjects
Not more homework in one lump — homework from maths and French and geography, set on different days, due on different days. The work is rarely the hard part. Remembering it exists is.
Older students around
There are eighteen-year-olds in your school now. In practice they are busy, they mostly ignore Year 7 entirely, and many schools stagger break times so you barely overlap. They are much less interested in you than you think.
Lunch is your problem now
Usually a cashless card or a fingerprint, several food options, and a queue. Nobody tells you when to eat or reminds you to. This sounds stressful and turns out to be most people's favourite part.
More trust, more responsibility
Nobody chases you for your PE kit or checks your bag. Equipment, deadlines and getting to the right room are yours to manage. That is the actual leap from Year 6 to Year 7 — not the work.
A typical Year 7 day
Every school is different, so treat this as the shape of a day rather than the exact times. Yours might start earlier, finish later, or split break differently.
Subjects you probably haven't done before
You will keep English, maths, science, history, geography, art, music, PE and computing. Year 7 adds a few genuinely new ones.
A modern foreign language
French, Spanish or German most commonly, and it is compulsory for all of Years 7 to 9. Some schools teach two. Almost everybody starts from nothing, so there is no catching up to do.
Design & Technology
Real workshops, real tools, real materials — wood, plastic, textiles, electronics, and usually food and nutrition on rotation. You design something and then actually make it.
Drama
Often its own timetabled subject rather than something that only happens at Christmas. Scripts, improvisation, performing to your class.
Science in a lab
Benches, gas taps, Bunsen burners, safety goggles. You start to see biology, chemistry and physics as three connected things rather than one subject called “science”.
Citizenship and RE
How laws, money, rights and government actually work, and a proper look at what different people believe and why.
Music, seriously
Keyboards, guitars, drum kits, music technology, and in most schools the chance to learn an instrument properly — sometimes free or heavily subsidised in Year 7. Ask.
What the work actually looks like
🔢 Maths in Year 7
The first term is often partly revision, because everyone arrives from a different primary and teachers need everyone on the same page. Then it moves on, and it moves on fastest in these directions:
- Algebra becomes real. In Year 6 you met simple formulae and missing numbers. In Year 7 letters start standing for quantities properly — you simplify, expand, factorise and solve.
- Negative numbers everywhere. Not just on a thermometer. You add, subtract, multiply and divide with them until it is automatic.
- Ratio and proportion get serious. Scaling recipes, maps, best-buy problems, direct proportion.
- Geometry gets reasons. Not just “measure this angle” but “explain why this angle must be 70°”. Angle facts become arguments.
- Fractions, decimals and percentages become one topic. You stop treating them as three separate things and start swapping between them freely.
The Year 6 skill that pays off most: knowing your times tables cold, and being confident with fractions. Everything above leans on both.
📖 English in Year 7
The biggest change is that there is no SPaG test any more — but grammar has not gone away. It has moved into your writing, where it is marked as part of how well you write rather than as a separate paper.
- Whole books, not extracts. You read a complete novel or play over several weeks, rather than a page-long passage with questions.
- Shakespeare arrives. Usually one play in Year 7 or 8, and usually a comedy first.
- Longer writing. Multi-paragraph essays with a line of argument, quotations used as evidence, and a conclusion that does more than repeat the introduction.
- “Why did the writer do that?” Comprehension shifts from finding information towards explaining the effect of a writer's choices.
- Speaking counts. Presentations, group discussion and debate are part of the subject.
The Year 6 skill that pays off most: reading for pleasure. Not revision — just reading things you actually enjoy, regularly. It builds vocabulary faster than anything else, and vocabulary is what makes secondary English feel easy or hard.
Will I be put in sets?
Often, yes — especially in maths, and often not straight away. Practice varies a lot between schools, so the honest answer is “ask your school”, but here is what usually happens.
Many secondary schools give new Year 7s some baseline tests in the first few weeks. These are frequently CATs (Cognitive Ability Tests) and they look nothing like SATs: puzzle-like questions about words, numbers, shapes and patterns. They are designed so that you cannot revise for them, and that is the point — they are trying to see how you think, not what you were taught. If someone offers to sell your family practice papers for them, they are selling you very little.
Schools usually combine those results with your SATs scores and their own first impressions. Two things worth knowing: sets are normally different for different subjects, so you might be in a higher set for maths than for English; and sets move. Plenty of people change set during Year 7. It is a starting point, not a label.
The worries, honestly answered
These are the things Year 6s actually ask about. Not the things adults think they ask about.
What if I get lost?
You will, and it genuinely does not matter. Every Year 7 spends September getting lost. Teachers know exactly which week it is and expect it — turning up late to a lesson in the first fortnight because you went to the wrong floor is not something you will get in trouble for. Most schools also give you a map, a buddy, or an older student to ask. Asking is the fast way; wandering is the slow way.
What if all my friends go to a different school?
This one is genuinely hard, and it is worth saying so rather than pretending otherwise. But two things are true. First, your form group means you see the same 25-30 people every single morning, which is how most Year 7 friendships actually start. Second, everybody is looking for people in September — even the ones who arrived with friends. It is the one month of your school life where “are you new too?” is a completely normal opening line. Clubs speed this up enormously.
Are the older kids going to be horrible to me?
Overwhelmingly, no. The Year 11s have GCSEs on their minds and the sixth formers have their own building to be in. Most schools stagger break and lunch so year groups barely mix, and many run a system where older students are given responsibility for looking after Year 7s rather than the opposite. If someone is unpleasant, secondary schools take that seriously and have far more staff to deal with it — tell your form tutor, who is the right person for exactly this.
Will the work be too hard?
The work is pitched at people who have just left Year 6, because that is who is doing it. Teachers spend the first term deliberately finding out what everyone knows, and a lot of early Year 7 is revisiting Year 6 content. What is harder is not the difficulty — it is the quantity of admin. Right book, right room, right kit, homework written down. Get that bit right and the work looks after itself.
What if I forget my homework or my PE kit?
Then you get a reminder, and if it keeps happening, a detention. That is the whole consequence. It is not a disaster and it does not go on a permanent record somewhere. Almost everyone does it at least once in the first term. Packing your bag the night before, from your timetable, removes about 90% of these.
Do I have to get changed in front of everyone for PE?
You change in a communal changing room, which is the bit people worry about most and mention least. Everyone is self-conscious, everyone is fast, and nobody is looking. If it genuinely distresses you — and for some people it does — that is a completely reasonable thing to tell your form tutor or head of year before term starts. Schools deal with this quietly and often.
What if I need help and nobody knows me?
Your form tutor is the answer to this, and it is worth learning their name before anything else. They see you every morning, they are the person other teachers go through, and their entire job includes noticing when you are struggling. Every school also has a head of year and usually a pastoral or wellbeing team. The system for getting help is bigger at secondary, not smaller — it just needs you to ask once.
I'm autistic / I have ADHD / I get overwhelmed. Is this going to be awful?
It is a real change, and the honest bit is that the first half-term is the hardest part: new noise, new routes, new faces, and a lot more transitions in a day. The useful bit is that this is completely expected and schools plan for it. Ask about an enhanced transition — extra visits before September, a photo tour, meeting your form tutor early, a map with your routes marked, a quiet space you are allowed to use, or starting a day before everyone else. Many schools offer this and simply do not advertise it. The SENCO (the teacher in charge of additional needs) is the person to email, and asking in the summer term is far easier than asking in October.
How to actually get ready
Notice that none of this is revision. There is nothing academic you need to do over the summer — the school will start from where you are.
- Do the journey once, for real. Walk or ride the actual route, at roughly the actual time. Knowing the way removes more first-day nerves than anything else on this list.
- Learn to tie your own tie. Small thing. Enormously annoying on the first morning if you cannot.
- Practise packing from a timetable. Once you have it, do a dry run: put in the books for tomorrow, not everything you own. Heavy bags are a Year 7 speciality.
- Learn your locker combination and your lunch PIN. Boring, and you will need both under mild pressure on day one.
- Read something you like. Anything. Graphic novels count. Football autobiographies count.
- Know one adult's name. Your form tutor's, if you can find it out. Having one name is the difference between “I don’t know anyone” and “I know who to ask”.
- Accept the first two weeks will be tiring. Longer days, more walking, more concentrating. Being wiped out in September is not a sign it is going badly.
For parents and carers
A few things that catch families out in the first term.
- Communication moves online. Most secondaries use an app or portal for homework, attendance, behaviour points and reports. Get logged in during the first week rather than in October, and set the notifications up properly.
- You will hear much less about the school day. “Fine” becomes the standard report. This is normal developmental behaviour rather than evidence that something is wrong; asking one specific question (“who did you sit with at lunch?”) works better than “how was school?”.
- The form tutor is your first contact, always. Not the head, not the subject teacher — the tutor, who sees your child daily and can coordinate with everyone else.
- September tiredness is real. Longer days plus a longer journey plus constant newness. Expect a short-tempered fortnight, and protect sleep more than homework in that period.
- If your child has SEND, contact the SENCO in the summer term. Transition arrangements, an enhanced visit and a one-page profile are far easier to set up before term starts than after a difficult first month.
- Free school meals, uniform grants and travel passes carry over — but usually need re-applying for. Check with the new school and the local council; many families lose entitlements simply by assuming they transfer automatically.
The official version, if you want it
Everything above is our plain-English summary. If you would rather read exactly what schools are legally required to teach, these are the real government documents — free, and linked directly rather than through anybody's paywall.
Years 5 & 6 — Key Stage 2
What you have been doing. Useful for checking exactly what is examinable at SATs.
Key Stage 1 & 2 overviewgov.uk — the short, readable summary Full primary framework (PDF)Every KS1–2 subject in one document English programmes of studyIncludes the statutory spelling and grammar appendices Maths programmes of study (PDF)Set out year by year, Years 1–6 Science programmes of studyYears 1–6Year 7 — Key Stage 3
What is coming. Key Stage 3 covers Years 7, 8 and 9.
Key Stage 3 & 4 overviewgov.uk — which subjects are compulsory, and when Full secondary framework (PDF)Every KS3–4 subject, including English Maths, Key Stage 3 (PDF)Exactly where Year 6 maths leads next Science, Key Stage 3 (PDF)Biology, chemistry and physics as separate strands All secondary subjectsThe full collection, subject by subjectEvery link on this page goes straight to gov.uk or the government's own asset service, and each one was checked before it was added. We never use link shorteners, because a shortened link hides where it actually goes.
If you're worried about any of this
Year 7 is a bigger change than any single test you will sit this year. It is also one that essentially everybody manages, including the people who were most worried about it in June. You will be fine, and by half term you will have forgotten you were ever nervous.