What Should My Child Know by the End of Year 1?

Year 1 is the first full year of the National Curriculum proper, and it includes one statutory assessment — the Phonics Screening Check — alongside broader expectations across reading, writing and maths.

Reading and phonics

Confident blending of sounds to read unfamiliar words, recognising most Phase 5 phonics sounds, reading common exception words (tricky words that don't follow standard phonics rules), and the statutory Phonics Screening Check in June, testing decoding via 40 words including made-up "pseudo-words."

Writing

Writing simple sentences with a capital letter and full stop, spelling many common exception words correctly, forming most lower-case letters correctly, and beginning to use finger spaces consistently between words.

Maths

Counting to and beyond 100, understanding place value for numbers to 20, addition and subtraction facts within 20, recognising and naming basic 2D and 3D shapes, and telling time to the hour and half hour.

The Phonics Screening Check specifically

This is the one statutory checkpoint in Year 1 — a short, one-to-one reading check, not a written exam. Children who don't reach the threshold automatically retake it in Year 2, alongside continued teaching in the meantime. It's a screening tool for extra support, not a pass/fail judgement.

What genuinely normal variation looks like

A gap of several months either way from these benchmarks is entirely typical — Year 1 covers children from just-turned-5 to nearly-7 within the same class, and developmental variation at this age is completely normal.

Supporting Year 1 learning at home

Consistent daily reading (even just ten minutes), continued phonics practice matched to what's being taught at school, and everyday maths — counting stairs, sharing out snacks equally, spotting shapes on a walk — genuinely reinforce the curriculum without needing formal "homework" style sessions.