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TheSchoolRun.com closure date

As we informed you a few months ago, TheSchoolRun has had to make the difficult decision to close due to financial pressures and the company has now ceased trading. We had hoped to keep our content available through a partnership with another educational provider, but this provider has since withdrawn from the agreement.

As a result, we now have to permanently close TheSchoolRun.com. However, to give subscribers time to download any content they’d like to keep, we will keep the website open until 31st July 2025. After this date, the site will be taken down and there will be no further access to any resources. We strongly encourage you to download and save any resources you think you may want to use in the future.

In particular, we suggest downloading:

You should already have received 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep. If you haven’t received these, please contact us at [email protected] before 31st July 2025, and we will send them to you.

We are very sorry that there is no way to continue offering access to resources and sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.

What are active and passive sentences?

Active and passive sentences explained
The cat chased the mouse; the mouse was chased by the cat. Learn to identify active and passive voice in sentences and support your child's Year 6 grammar knowledge and understanding.

What are active and passive sentences?

A sentence is written in active voice when the subject of the sentence is performing the action.

A sentence is written in passive voice when the subject of the sentence has something done to it by someone or something.

For example:
Active and passive voice

Active voice: The cat was chasing the mouse.
In this sentence, 'the cat' is the subject, 'was chasing' is the verb and 'the mouse' is the object.

Passive voice: The mouse was being chased by the cat.
In this sentence 'the mouse' has become the subject which is having something done to it by the cat.

How are the active and passive voice taught and used?

People tend to use the active voice rather than the passive voice when they are writing, but the passive voice is often used for particular reasons. For example:

Here, the person who has done the graffiti is not known, so the sentence is written in the passive voice.

Here, it is not important who counted the votes, but instead the fact that they have been counted is important. You could also say that the most important thing in the sentence is the votes, which is why they are mentioned first in the sentence, rather than last as they would be would be in the active voice ('People counted the votes').

English Glossary

Year 6 children learn about the active and passive voice as part of their work on English grammar. They will be shown how to use it in their writing as a way of varying sentence structure. They may also be tested on passive sentences in the KS2 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling test which Y6 children sit as part of their KS2 English SATs.