* Subjectivity: Difficulty is subjective. What one child finds challenging, another might find easy. Factors like individual strengths, preparation, and test-taking strategies all play a significant role.
* No Official Difficulty Rating: The government doesn't release an official difficulty index or comparison to previous years. They aim for consistency in the overall standard, not a uniform difficulty level year-on-year.
* Variations within the Tests: The SATs comprise multiple papers (reading, grammar, punctuation and spelling, maths arithmetic and maths reasoning) and the difficulty can vary across different papers.
While some anecdotal evidence from teachers and parents might suggest certain papers were harder or easier than usual in specific areas, drawing a definitive conclusion about the overall difficulty of the 2023 Year 6 SATs is impossible. Any perceived increase or decrease in difficulty is purely based on opinion and subjective interpretation.