What Is the SPaG Test? A Guide for Parents

SPaG stands for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. The SPaG test is one of the Year 6 SATs papers, sat in May alongside reading and maths. Many parents find it the most unfamiliar, because it uses a lot of technical grammatical terminology that many adults weren't explicitly taught.

What the test involves

The SPaG assessment has two components:

**Paper 1: Grammar and punctuation** (45 minutes, around 50 marks). Tests children's knowledge of grammatical terminology and their ability to apply correct punctuation. Question types include: identifying word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives), correcting punctuation errors, adding missing punctuation, selecting the correct word form, explaining the effect of language features.

**Paper 2: Spelling** (approximately 20 minutes, 20 marks). The teacher reads out 20 sentences and children write a missing word in the correct spelling. The focus is on common exception words and words from the statutory Year 3-6 spelling list.

Key vocabulary children need to know

The paper uses specific grammatical terms. These are the most commonly tested:

Word classes: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, determiner.

Punctuation: full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, comma, semicolon, colon, apostrophe (contraction and possession), inverted commas / speech marks, brackets, dash, ellipsis.

Sentence-level: main clause, subordinate clause, relative clause, fronted adverbial, direct speech, passive voice, formal and informal register.

How to help at home

Grammar is best learned through reading and writing, not through drilling definitions. Children who read widely absorb sentence structures intuitively; the test asks them to name what they already do.

For specific revision: use the statutory word list (freely available from the DfE) for spelling practice. Work through it in 5-word batches, using the look-cover-write-check method.

For grammar: ask your child to explain a grammatical term to you. If they can teach it clearly, they know it. If they can't, look it up together.

Don't panic if you don't know the terms yourself. You almost certainly use fronted adverbials and subordinate clauses in your own speech and writing; you just might not know the names. Reassure your child that the underlying skills — clear, well-punctuated writing — are things they practise every day.