Should Year 3 be in key stage 1?

Now that Year 2 Sats are no longer statutory, there is a growing discussion about why we still organise the primary curriculum as we do. Ellen Peirson-Hagger speaks to primary leaders both for and against a shake-up of the key stages
31st January 2025, 5:00am
Should Year 3 be in key stage 1?

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Should Year 3 be in key stage 1?

https://www.tes.com/magazine/analysis/primary/should-year-3-be-key-stage-1

Since the curriculum and assessment review began last year, much of its focus has been on the content and if and how this should change. But what about the structure of the curriculum?

Late last year, Cathie Paine, chief executive of REAch2 - the country’s largest primary-only multi-academy trust, with 62 schools - raised this issue by positing that it might make sense for Year 3 to move from key stage 2 to key stage 1.

“We’re questioning the need for key stage 1 being where it currently sits, given that the assessment at the end of Year 2 is now gone,” she said at an event in Birmingham.

“We’re wondering whether, in fact, a Year 3 child has a lot more in common with a Year 2 child than they have with a Year 6 child, and what relooking at that might do.”

Tes spoke to a raft of primary leaders and experts to see what they thought of this idea, and if it is something the curriculum review panel should be considering.

An outdated system

Andrew Rigby, education director at REAch2, agrees with his colleague Paine that Year 3 should be shifted, noting it would make more sense practically to have three years in KS1 and three in KS2.

“In terms of management and resource, if you’re going to have key stage coordinators, it makes sense to give them the same number of classes, the same number of year groups,” he tells Tes.


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Rigby also says the current KS1-KS2 split feels outdated because while key stages were introduced in the Education Reform Act of 1988 (itself almost 40 years ago), the split between infants and juniors dates back to at least 1870, and has been a legacy of the system ever since.

“It should be within the scope of the review to question what is essentially a 19th-century model,” Rigby argues.

“Otherwise we are straitjacketing the outcomes of the review with a system that was designed for a different curriculum and a different set of assessment principles.”

Furthermore, while statutory Year 2 Sats (introduced in 1991) reinforced the break between Years 2 and 3 and therefore gave some purpose to the split, as Paine pointed out, they were made optional in 2023.

The current key stage model “has historically given us points of standardisation for assessment”, Rigby says. “But we don’t have statutory requirements at the end of KS1 in the same way we used to. So why are we keeping it?”

Year 3, the ‘forgotten year’

Claire Heald, CEO of Cam Academy Trust - which runs 13 Cambridgeshire schools, including seven primaries - also believes Year 3 should be part of KS1.

“Year 3 has almost become the forgotten year. This is an unintended consequence of the accountability framework,” says Heald, referring to how the year has historically followed the Year 2 assessment, and is the furthest away from Year 6 Sats.

As such, she says “leaders aren’t forensic around pupil progress, target setting and monitoring” for Year 3s. Moving Year 3 into KS1 and positioning it as “a really important endpoint” would allow teachers to “set the bar higher”, she adds.

Heald says this would be particularly beneficial when it comes to reading, which in Years 1 and 2 is focused on phonics, but then in Year 3 moves to decoding texts, fluency and comprehension.

This transition can be a “really sticky, challenging” point for children. But, she argues, if Year 3 was moved into KS1, and the shift in its reading curriculum brought within the key stage, it would help “make that progression more seamless”.

Should Year 3 be in key stage 1?


The issue of transition is a point echoed by Ian Dewes, chief executive of Odyssey Collaborative Trust, a seven-primary MAT in Derby. “One of the big problems with Year 3 is that children don’t always look like they are learning that much,” he says.

Dewes thinks this is because although Year 2 Sats are no longer statutory, many schools still test at the end of KS1, and because it is the end of the key stage, there is “pressure…that leads sometimes to results being optimised, shall we say”.

At the same time, children face other challenges when transitioning between KS1 and KS2, such as getting used to a larger playground, a new part of the building and a different lunchtime and playtime routine.

These challenges, combined with the assessment focus in Year 2, can make it seem as though some children “regress a little bit” in Year 3, Dewes says. As such, extending KS1 to incorporate Year 3 would allow Year 3 children more opportunity to make the progress they need in KS1.

‘There’s a real risk that Year 3 becomes a breather year - and it shouldn’t be’

In addition, Dewes says that in recent years, and particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, “elements of early years practice have been creeping into Year 1, with Year 1 looking a bit more like Reception” - for example in terms of more continuous provision.

“So we could also make the argument for making Year 3 part of KS1 simply because it allows more time for the KS1 curriculum to be covered,” Dewes says.

These sentiments are echoed by Rigby at REAch2, who says Year 3 can sometimes be a “fallow year”. “I think there’s a real risk that there’s a reduced urgency, that Year 3 becomes a breather year - and it shouldn’t be.”

The infant-junior conundrum

Of course, making such an adjustment to a long-upheld school structure is no small task. The national curriculum splits content into KS1 and KS2, so moving the dividing line between the two would mean moving the curriculum around too.

However, Dewes says “the national curriculum isn’t tremendously detailed, particularly in the foundation subjects, so that wouldn’t be a huge piece of work”.

And the change would perhaps be more difficult for infant and junior schools, as instead of Year 3s starting a new key stage at their new school, they would have to finish KS1 there.

But Dewes, whose trust runs two junior schools, agrees that while it would be “messy”, it would be workable - and “just another bit of messiness in a very messy system”. 

Michael Tidd, headteacher of East Preston Junior School in West Sussex, also says he doesn’t believe there would be “any real barriers” to the change - noting that first and middle schools have “managed for years” (referring to the fact these schools take on pupils mid key stages).

Should Year 3 be in key stage 1?


Given all this, Dewes says the curriculum review is an ideal time to consider this shift: “If we’re looking at the curriculum, this would be the time to change those boundaries.”

Clearly, there is consensus for this idea from those with primary expertise. But should Professor Becky Francis and her review panel team be hastily working to redraft the structure of primary key stages? Not everyone thinks so.

The risk of ‘ceiling attainment’

Lynsey Holzer, CEO of The Active Learning Trust - which runs 19 schools, including 14 primaries and two through-schools, in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk - agrees with the other leaders that “KS1 is quite short”.

“You’ve only got Year 1 and Year 2 to make quite significant gains,” she says, “so I can see why Year 3 would be there - to finish off that work.”

However, unlike Heald, she believes that shifting Year 3 down to KS1 “may ceiling attainment, may bring down expectations” - because teachers, naturally comparing a new system with the current one, would come to see Year 3 as an extension of Year 2.

What’s more, Holzer and her staff recognise that children “go through a shift cognitively in Year 2. That’s why we have so many friendship problems start to come through in the spring/summer of Year 2, because [the children] are more aware of themselves”.

This developmental change in children around the age of 7 is something Megan Dixon, associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, also recognises. She describes it as a “period of criticality”, when children “suddenly notice the world around them” for the first time.

To Holzer, it therefore makes sense for children undergoing this change to begin a new key stage: “My view would be to leave KS1 [as it is], because they are ready to enter the next part of their education and feel like it’s different.”

The curriculum disconnect

Leaders on this side of the debate also observe the supposed lack of progress in Year 3 that Rigby, Heald and Dewes have seen.

But Alice Heywood, director of educational strategy at the Stephen Perse Foundation, a group of private schools in Cambridgeshire and Essex, describes it as “a drop in the rate of progress rather than a drop in attainment”. Year 3 children “are not going backwards”, she says.

What’s more, Jane Bush, headteacher of Langstone Primary Academy in Portsmouth, part of the University of Chichester Academy Trust, says a lack of progress is just a perception - because of a disconnect between curriculums.

The KS1 and KS2 curriculums “don’t tie up completely”, she says, adding that “changes in terminology and in presentation” make Year 3 children feel as though they are being introduced to “brand-new learning” rather than an extension of what they have covered previously.

These differences might be subtle - for example, differing terminology in English writing assessments, such as “main clause” and “independent clause”. But they can be confusing for children, hence the perceived backwards step, Bush explains.

But she doesn’t believe altering the key stages would be beneficial: “I think all you’ll do is move the transition,” she says. “It’s about removing the transition, and one of the ways we can do that is in the curriculum design - we need to make sure we tie up our curriculums.”

‘What England desperately needs is a more coherent curriculum from 3 to 18’

It’s an issue also seen by James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the NAHT school leaders’ union, who adds that moving Year 3 would have a “knock-on effect” on KS2: “We couldn’t expect schools to fit what is currently an already packed four-year curriculum into three years.”

And, returning to the infant/junior school point, Bowen argues the move would complicate things here: “[Any] change would have a clear impact. It’s clearly not something that could or should be rushed into.”

Meanwhile, Alice Edgington, headteacher of St Stephen’s Infant School in Canterbury, acknowledges that moving Year 3 “has the potential to support a greater understanding for junior schools on the KS1 curriculum”.

But she adds it could also “take away the ability to measure [the impact of] infant schools” because children would be completing the key stage elsewhere.

The bigger picture

So, is the issue bigger than Year 3 and the key stage it sits in, and instead about the entire structure of the primary curriculum?

Angela Crawley, primary executive principal of Central Region Schools Trust, a 13-academy MAT in the Midlands, believes so, saying that moving Year 3 would just be an “organisational” change rather than one about learning.

Instead, she argues for a single all-through primary curriculum: “I would be pro one journey, as opposed to snippets of journeys that mean we then have this lull after each key point.”

Heywood also argues for a “continuum curriculum” throughout primary, saying this would give teachers “the flexibility to decide what is best for the children in front of them”.

It would therefore “lift the ceiling [on attainment], because you’re not trying to get to the end of the key stage - you’re trying to get as far as you can”.

Dixon concurs. “I would have an early years that goes up to Year 1, at the very earliest, and then have a primary years and a secondary years.”

Like Heywood, Dixon says this would better allow for children’s “variation of experiences and opportunities”. For example, across the primary phase, some children “would still benefit from vast quantities of social experiences and more play-based opportunities”, while “others are more ready to do something more formal”.

It’s an appealing prospect for Tidd too. “It’d make most sense to me to merge the two key stages into a primary stage - particularly given that the core curriculum is set out by year groups anyway,” he says.

No more key stages?

It would be a radical shift in how we understand primary education. But even this would not be enough of an overhaul for Dominic Wyse, professor of early childhood and primary education at University College London.

“What I think England desperately needs is a more coherent curriculum from 3 to 18,” he says, “because what we have now is a basic lack of coherence.”

Wyse adds that “the very fact that we have things called ‘key stages’ is unique to England”, which “begs a wider question”: why do we still use these dividers at all? Debating the placement of Year 3 or even KS1 and 2 is a “narrow detail” in a far bigger debate about the “fundamentals” of our system, he says.

Whether the curriculum and assessment review panel will go as far as suggesting a single all-through curriculum at primary level, or indeed for the entire system, remains to be seen.

Some in the sector don’t believe such a change is needed and may be happy if the topic is left alone. But for others, including those leading the largest primary MAT in the country, it’s something that needs to be considered if the purpose of the review is to be truly fulfilled.

“What doesn’t appear to be explicitly within the scope of the review is questioning the fundamental models that define the learning journey for children,” Rigby says. “I think we should be questioning some of our deeply held assumptions.”

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