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How is the score worked out from the marks?
Answered by Sam Stirling, former P7 teacher · Last checked: 2 November 2026
The short answer
The number of right answers is turned into a score that says where your child stands among everyone who sat. That is why the same number of right answers can mean a different score in a different year: it depends how hard the paper was.
More detail
Three things go in: how many questions your child got right, how hard that year's paper was, and your child's age. The Statement shows the raw marks too but calls them "not standardised" for this reason.
Here's what that means in practice. Picture two children of the same ability: one sat the test in November 2024, the other in November 2025. The 2025 papers were harder, so both of them, and everyone else that year, got fewer questions right. From Statements parents have shared with me, about 94 right answers out of 112 reached Band 1 in 2024, and about 83 in 2025. Same band, eleven marks apart.
These are rough figures from those Statements, not SEAG's: SEAG doesn't publish how many right answers each band needs. But the idea is SEAG's own. The score depends on how hard that year's paper was, so "how many did she get right?" is the wrong question, and the standardised score is the right one.
Last checked: 2 November 2026 by Sam. The official facts on this page come from:
- SEAG Get Answers (FAQs): scores (read 27 October 2026)
Next step
Check your child's result
Type the numbers from the Statement of Outcomes and see what they mean, school by school.