Algebra, ratio, long division and the full range of fraction, decimal and percentage calculations all come together this year.
25 August 2026 · 7 min read
Year 6 is the final year of primary maths, and the curriculum reflects that — it's largely about bringing everything covered since Year 1 together, extending it to its full complexity, and adding a handful of genuinely new topics (algebra, ratio) that bridge into secondary school. It's also the year of the KS2 SATs, sat in May.
Children work with numbers up to 10,000,000, and use formal written methods for all four operations, including long multiplication and long division for numbers with up to four digits. They also learn the order of operations — that multiplication and division are done before addition and subtraction in a calculation with more than one operation.
This is where the full toolkit comes together: multiplying and dividing fractions, including by whole numbers, using a common denominator to add and subtract fractions with different denominators, and associating a fraction with division (recognising that 3/8 means "3 divided by 8"). Children convert fluently between fractions, decimals and percentages, and solve problems that combine all three.
Genuinely new this year: solving problems involving the relative sizes of two quantities (ratio) and scaling by a given factor (proportion) — for example, sharing an amount in a given ratio, or working out how a recipe scales up or down.
Also new: using simple formulae expressed in words or symbols, generating and describing linear number sequences, and finding missing values in simple equations. This is deliberately introduced gently, as a bridge towards the more formal algebra of secondary school, not as a full algebra course.
Children calculate the area, perimeter and volume of increasingly complex shapes, and convert between metric units (and have some awareness of common imperial equivalents). Geometry covers circles (naming radius, diameter and circumference), calculating unknown angles in triangles and other shapes, and using coordinates and simple transformations (translation, reflection). Statistics extends to interpreting and constructing pie charts, and calculating and interpreting the mean average.
Long division tends to be the single most technically demanding written method in the whole primary curriculum, with several sequential steps (divide, multiply, subtract, bring down) that each need to be done correctly for the final answer to be right. Ratio and algebra are both genuinely new types of thinking rather than extensions of something familiar, so it's normal for these to take longer to click than topics that build more directly on earlier years.
Grasp Maths breaks Year 6 content down into its component skills — long division, fraction operations, ratio, algebra — rather than treating "Year 6 maths" as one block, so practice time goes to whichever specific piece is actually holding a child back, whether that's ahead of SATs or general end-of-primary consolidation.
Looking for printable practice too? See our Year 6 maths worksheets.
Try a free Grasp Maths practice session, matched to the Year 6 curriculum.