8 October 2026 · Hugo Harrabin
Maths often dips after the move to secondary. What their KS2 score means, how to tell a normal dip from a real gap, and what to ask at parents' evening.
The first maths test of Year 7 comes back, or the first report, or the first parents' evening, and a child who coped fine at primary school is suddenly finding maths hard. One parent described the moment in a survey of 30 parents we ran in October 2026: "she realised she's a bit behind her peers".
A dip in maths after the move to secondary school is common, and for most children it is small and temporary. This guide covers what the research says is normal, what your child's KS2 SATs score tells you, four common reasons a child falls behind in Year 7, what to ask about maths at parents' evening, and how to tell when it's more than a dip. For the GCSE years that follow, our parents' guide to GCSE Maths covers what you need to know about maths through the rest of secondary school: how it's graded, Foundation and Higher tiers, the three exam papers, where students lose marks and how to help at home.
Key Takeaways
- A dip in maths after the move to secondary school is well documented. In one study of about 300 pupils, 34% scored lower on the same maths test at the end of Year 7 than at the end of Year 6, after a whole year of secondary maths. Across the tests, most pupils' drop was small.
- The Education Endowment Foundation describes "a large dip in mathematical attainment and attitudes towards maths" at the move to secondary school.
- In our teachers' experience, "behind" in Year 7 usually means one of four things: a gap from primary school, forgetting over the summer, a slide in confidence, or a lower set than expected. Each needs a different response.
- A KS2 maths score of 100 or more means your child met the expected standard. In 2026, 75% of pupils in state-funded schools did, so about one in four started Year 7 below it.
- Start by finding out what the problem is: ask the maths teacher specific questions, at parents' evening or by email, and get the gaps assessed. The right help depends on which kind of behind it is.
- It's more than a dip when the same gap shows up in assessments into the spring term, or your child starts avoiding maths.
Yes. A drop in maths results after the move to secondary school has been documented in England since at least the 1990s, and for most children it is small.
A 1999 review for the then Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) reported a study that followed about 300 pupils through the move from Year 6 to Year 7 and gave them the same tests a year apart. A year after the move, 34% did less well in maths than they had at the end of primary school, on the same test and despite a full year of secondary school maths lessons in between. Across the tests, "for most pupils these differences were small", around three or four marks on a 33-question test, though 7% of pupils lost between a quarter and a third of the marks (Galton, Gray and Ruddock, 1999).
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which reviews teaching research for schools in England, reaches the same conclusion in its maths guidance for Key Stages 2 and 3. It describes "a large dip in mathematical attainment and attitudes towards maths as children move from primary to secondary school". It cites a national study in which pupils scored lower on a primary numeracy test at the end of Year 7, a full year after the move, than they had at the end of Year 6 (EEF, 2017). The two findings describe different things: the EEF calls the overall dip large, while the 1999 study found that for most individual pupils the drop in marks was small, and a minority lost much more.
These studies are not recent, and we couldn't find a recent national measure of the dip. The National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), which supports maths teachers in England, still wrote in 2024 about "the decline in attainment often observed in Year 7" (NCETM, 2024).
Several things change at once, and only some of them are about the maths.
The teaching changes. Some primary schools teach maths with a "mastery" approach, where the whole class works through each idea in small steps with the same pictures and equipment. Secondary maths departments often use different methods, words and diagrams. The NCETM notes that even children who did well in Year 6 can struggle with the different approaches at secondary school, and that children with middle and lower results from primary are affected more (NCETM, 2024).
Some of the work is repeated. When Ofsted looked at the first years of secondary school in 2015, it found that "some secondary leaders simply accepted that pupils would repeat what they had already done in primary school during the early part of Key Stage 3, particularly in Year 7" (Ofsted, 2015). Repeating work doesn't make a child worse at maths, but it stops them moving forward. The 1999 review found that some pupils lose interest going over old work, while others coast on it. A year of that can leave a child scoring lower on the same test than they did in Year 6.
Time has passed. Year 6 SATs are in May. By the first Year 7 assessment, a child may not have practised some topics for four or five months, and unused maths fades. We explain why in why your child remembers nothing from their revision.
Everything else is new too. New teachers, rules, homework and tests all arrive at once. The 1999 review found that getting used to new routines and procedures "usually means a temporary de-skilling". In a University of Cambridge study of maths anxiety, secondary pupils said the move from primary had been a cause of their anxiety: the work seemed harder, they felt they couldn't cope, and there was more pressure from tests and homework (Carey et al., 2019).
A KS2 maths score of 100 or more means your child met the expected standard at the end of primary school. KS2 is Key Stage 2, the last four years of primary school, and the SATs are the national tests children sit in May of Year 6. It's also one of the first things the secondary school looks at when planning for them. It's a snapshot from May of Year 6, so it can't tell you how they're coping with secondary maths now.
What the score means. The KS2 maths test is three papers: arithmetic, worth 40 marks, and two reasoning papers worth 35 marks each, 110 marks in all. The raw mark is converted to a scaled score between 80 and 120, so that results can be compared from year to year even when the papers vary in difficulty. A scaled score of 100 or more means your child met the expected standard; 99 or below means they didn't (STA). In 2026, a scaled score of 100 took 56 marks out of 110, and a scaled score of 110 took 94 (STA, 2026).
How it compares. A score of 110 or more counts as the higher standard. In 2026, 75% of pupils in state-funded schools in England met the expected standard in maths, 27% reached the higher standard, and the average scaled score was 105 (DfE, 2026). So about one in four children started this Year 7 below the expected standard in maths.
If you don't have the score, it should be in the results your child's primary school sent home: schools decide how to share them, but parents should receive them by the end of the summer term (STA).
How the secondary school uses it. The secondary school can see your child's KS2 results, which the government says helps it "plan how best to support new pupils on entry" (STA). Schools use the results, alongside tests of their own, when setting targets and placing pupils in maths sets. When Ofsted spoke to secondary leaders in 2015, most said they used KS2 results to set pupils' targets, and 91% also ran their own baseline tests when pupils arrived. Some said they did so because they didn't think the KS2 results were reliable (Ofsted, 2015). That was before the current scaled scores, so practice may have changed since. It is one reason your child could sit maths tests in their first weeks of Year 7, and why their set can differ from their SATs score (more on sets below).
If the score was below 100. Missing the expected standard means some of the primary maths that secondary lessons build on may not be secure yet. The EEF says that "structured intervention support may be required for Year 7 pupils who are struggling to make progress" (EEF, 2017). The KS2 score alone doesn't say which topics are missing, so raise it at parents' evening using the questions below, especially 1 and 5. At home, work on those topics first. In our Year 7 diagnostics this autumn, gaps came up in fractions, rounding and two-step problems (examples below), so those are a good place to start.
A score just below 100 is close to the line: in 2026, a scaled score of 99 meant 52 to 55 marks, so between one and four marks short. Fewer than 15 marks out of 110 gave a score in the low 80s, so much more of the primary curriculum needs work, and that's worth raising with the school early in Year 7 rather than waiting for the first report.
Find out which kind of "behind" it is before doing anything about it. In our teachers' experience, "behind" in Year 7 usually comes in one of four kinds. They look similar from the outside, but each needs a different response.
| Kind of behind | What you might see | First step |
|---|---|---|
| A gap from primary school | The same type of question goes wrong every time, such as comparing or simplifying fractions | Ask the teacher which topic it is, and practise that topic only |
| Forgetting | Could do it in Year 6, can't now, but picks it up again quickly after a reminder | Short practice on that topic, spread over a few weeks |
| A confidence slide | Says "I'm bad at maths", rushes or avoids questions, does fine when calm | Talk about methods rather than marks (see below) |
| A lower set than expected | Placed in a lower set than they or you expected, or moved down | Ask how sets were decided and when they are reviewed |
Our teachers' rule of thumb from Year 7 diagnostic lessons. A child can have more than one. A gap from primary school is more likely if their KS2 maths score was below 100.
The two kinds that are hardest to tell apart are a gap and forgetting. A quick test we use is whether a short reminder fixes it. Say your child is getting 1/3 + 1/4 wrong. Show them one worked example of adding fractions with different denominators, then give them a similar question. If they can do it now, it was forgotten. If they still add the tops and the bottoms to get 2/7, the method was probably never secure.
Gaps we've seen in Year 7 diagnostics. These come from our own first-lesson diagnostics this autumn. The diagnostic is multiple choice, and each wrong answer points to a particular misunderstanding. The ones that came up were:
Each one is a specific method a teacher can check and reteach, which is why it's worth asking which topics, rather than how your child is doing overall.
Ask about specific topics, how the maths set was decided, and what the school does for children who need extra help. There's no fixed date for Year 7 parents' evening: each school sets its own, and in our experience it's usually in the first or second term, so check the school calendar or newsletter. If it's months away and you're worried now, email the maths teacher rather than waiting.
Appointments are short, often around five minutes, so take a short list:
If time runs out, ask the first two and the last, and agree a date to check in again after the next assessment. The teacher sees your child's maths every week, so their answer to question 2 is worth more than any single test score. If you have their KS2 score, take it with you; the section above explains what it means.
Find out which topics are the problem before deciding what help your child needs. The EEF says secondary schools should quickly build "a good understanding" of each Year 7 pupil's strengths and weaknesses in maths (EEF, 2017), so asking for that is a reasonable request.
At home, aim for 10 to 15 minutes a few times a week on the specific topic, with your child trying questions from memory before looking at notes or examples. Our guide to revision that works explains why short, spaced practice like this beats long sessions and re-reading. It's written for GCSEs, but the methods are the same in Year 7. You don't need to know the maths yourself: our guide to helping your child when you don't know the curriculum shows how.
Staying in touch with school is linked to better maths results. A study that followed 7,465 children in the south-west of England from age 7 to 16 found that parents' involvement with school at age 11 predicted higher maths results at that age and faster progress afterwards (Evans and Field, 2020). It shows a link rather than proving a cause, and the children were born in the early 1990s.
Sets are less exact than they look.
A study of 9,301 Year 7 students in 46 secondary schools in England compared the maths set each student was in with the set their KS2 maths score alone would have put them in. "Nearly a third of students (31.2%)" were in a higher or lower set than that score suggested (Connolly et al., 2019). Schools can use more than the SATs score to set children, so a different set isn't necessarily the wrong set, but the decision involves judgement, and it's fair to ask what it was based on.
Setting itself has a cost for lower sets. The EEF's review of the evidence found that setting by prior attainment doesn't raise attainment overall. It has "a slightly negative impact on pupils allocated to lower sets", while those in higher sets may benefit slightly (EEF, 2017).
The Year 7 set isn't the GCSE tier decision, but it can be the start of the track that leads there. Schools usually settle the tier early in the GCSE course, mostly through the maths set a child is in by then, and moves between tiers after that are relatively rare (Ofqual, 2017). So if the set doesn't look right in Year 7, raise it now, while set reviews in Years 7 to 9 can still move it. In many schools the tier is settled by the end of Year 9, as our guide to Year 9 maths and the GCSE tier explains. Our guide to Foundation or Higher tier explains how schools decide.
Watch how your child talks about maths as well as their marks, because confidence and results can come apart. Another parent in our survey put the worry plainly: "once he doesn't enjoy maths he will not enjoy it forever."
The Cambridge maths anxiety study found that 77% of children with high maths anxiety had typical or above-typical maths results (Carey et al., 2019). Marks alone won't tell you whether a child is anxious about maths. The same study found that some students felt more comfortable with maths after moving to secondary school, so the move doesn't make every child more anxious.
A few things help:
If your child does the homework well but falls apart in tests, that's a different problem, which we cover in why a child can do the drill but not the exam question.
It's more than a dip when the same problems carry on past the first term, your child starts avoiding maths, or they tell you they're so behind they can't catch up. Watch for:
If you suspect a specific learning difficulty, such as dyscalculia, speak to the school's special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) before looking at tutoring. An assessment comes first, and a tutor is no substitute for it.
If the problem is a clear gap that the school can't fill, extra teaching can help. Our guide to the signs a child needs a tutor covers that decision, and group tutoring vs one-to-one covers what the evidence says about the format.
If you're not sure what's behind the dip, our free first lesson includes a diagnostic assessment that shows which topics, if any, your child is missing. After that, a weekly class of six to eight students, taught by a PGCE-qualified teacher, works through those gaps.
Yes. In one study, 34% of pupils scored lower on the same maths test a year after moving to secondary school, and across all the tests most drops were a few marks (Galton, Gray and Ruddock, 1999). The EEF describes "a large dip" in attainment and attitudes at the move.
Secondary maths is taught differently, some of the work may be repeated, and several months pass between SATs in May and the first Year 7 tests. A child who did well in Year 6 can find the new methods hard at first. If a short reminder fixes the problem, it was probably forgetting rather than a real gap.
A scaled score of 100 or more. Scores run from 80 to 120, and in 2026 a score of 100 took 56 marks out of 110 (STA, 2026). A score of 110 or more is the higher standard.
Loosely. The DfE groups pupils by the average of their KS2 reading and maths scores. Of pupils who took GCSEs in 2024 with an average of 100 to 102, 60% got a grade 4 or above in maths, and most got a 3, 4 or 5. Of those averaging 110 to 113, 88% got a 5 or above and 45% a 7 or above (DfE, 2024). Children on the same score ended up several grades apart.
Not if there's a specific gap to close. Find out what's causing the problem first: ask the maths teacher which topics are going wrong, or use a diagnostic assessment like the one in our free first lesson. If there are gaps from primary school, or your child's confidence is slipping, regular teaching aimed at those gaps can help from the start.
It depends on the school, and how often sets are reviewed varies. Ask the maths teacher when sets are next reviewed and what your child would need to show to move up. It's worth asking early: the set a child is in at the start of the GCSE course usually decides their tier, and Year 7 can be the start of that track.
Not directly. The tier is usually settled early in the GCSE course, largely through the set your child is in then, and in many schools that's by the end of Year 9, as our guide to Year 9 maths and the GCSE tier explains. So Year 7 set reviews still matter. Our guide to Foundation or Higher tier explains how the tier is decided.
Sit in on a lesson led by one of our expert PGCE qualified teachers.
Book your free lessonThe guides are a great place to start. Each one covers a topic end to end and links to the articles that go deeper.
Grades, tiers, the three papers, where examiners say marks are lost and what a grade 3 means for sixth form.
The revision methods with the best evidence, how to use them to plan a week and how you can help at home.
Whether your child needs a tutor, what it costs, group or one-to-one and the nine questions to ask before you book.
