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Adding classes and students

How to add and manage your classes and students in Sparx Maths via your school's MIS connection.

Updated over 2 months ago

This article explains how to add and manage your classes and students in Sparx Maths when using MIS integration.

With MIS integration, your classes and students are automatically synced from your school's MIS.

This article is intended for schools that import their classes and students from their MIS (see this article if your school uses CSV import).

Before you begin

  • Ensure that your MIS integration is set up and that we have approval to access the data in your MIS.

    • You can view your MIS integration status by clicking on the user menu → 'Getting started' → 'School setup' → 'Connection to your MIS/SIS'

    • If you see any errors here, you'll need to speak to your school's technical contact.

  • If you have just started a new academic year, you may need to wait for your MIS administrator to set up classes. See Getting ready for a new academic year for more information.

Important considerations

  • Students can only belong to one class in Sparx Maths. If a student belongs to multiple classes in your MIS, you'll be asked to choose one class to place the into in Sparx Maths.

  • Only students on register in your MIS can be added to Sparx Maths. It is not possible to create student accounts manually.


Importing classes and students into Sparx Maths

When you import classes from your MIS, all students in those classes will also be imported into Sparx Maths.

  1. Go to 'Management' → 'Class Manager' → 'Import & Manage Classes'

    • By default, all maths classes available to import from your MIS will show on the left-hand side

    • If you want to add other classes (for example, registration groups), or you don't have subjects assigned to your classes in your MIS, click 'Show all subjects' and use the search bar to find other classes

  2. Tick any classes you would like to import into to Sparx Maths

  3. Click the arrow in the middle of the screen to move your selected classes to the right-hand side (classes imported into Sparx Maths)

  4. Click 'Preview changes'

  5. Check that you're happy with the changes that will be made. The preview will show you:

    • Classes to be added

    • New students to be added

    • Previous students to be reinstated

    • Any changes that will be made to classes and students when you sync (e.g. name changes, class moves etc.)

  6. Click 'Sync changes' if you're happy with the preview (the sync may take a couple of minutes to complete)

Managing conflicts

  • Students can only belong to one class in Sparx Maths

  • If a student belongs to multiple imported classes, you will see a warning message advising that you need to choose which class to place the student into in Sparx Maths.

  • You can view and resolve the conflicts by clicking the warning message. You will be able to assign individual students to the correct class, or assign multiple students to the same class in bulk.

Keeping class and student data in sync with your MIS

  • Once classes and students have been imported into Sparx Maths, we'll automatically sync the following changes across from your MIS:

    • Students added to classes

    • Students moving classes

    • Student, parent/carer and class name changes

    • Parent/carer contact updates

  • When you make a change in your school's MIS, the changes won't show in Sparx Maths immediately

    • Changes in your MIS are synced to Sparx Maths via a third party service called Wonde

    • Wonde pulls data from your MIS roughly every 4 hours

    • Sparx Maths pulls data from Wonde automatically overnight

    • As such, changes typically reflect in Sparx Maths within 24 hours

  • For urgent changes, you can perform a manual sync:

    1. Go to 'Class Manager' → 'Import & Manage Classes'

    2. Click 'Preview changes'

    3. Click 'Sync changes' if happy with the preview


Frequently asked questions


Why can't I see my classes to import?

  • Your MIS may not be fully set up yet (especially at the start of a new school year). Check with your school's MIS administrator.

  • Classes may have only just been added to your MIS (allow up to 24 hours for the changes to show in Sparx Maths)

  • Classes may not have subjects linked to them in your MIS (we only show maths classes by default and can't do this if your classes don't have subjects linked to them). Try selecting 'Show all subjects' on the 'Manage & import classes' screen to search from all classes available in your MIS.

  • There might be duplicate class names in your MIS. Check with your school's MIS administrator.

Why have some students disappeared?

  • They may have been moved to a new class that hasn't been imported into Sparx Maths (and so they've been removed from Sparx Maths).

    • In this case, importing the student's new class into Sparx Maths will reinstate the student's account and any homework progress/XP.

  • They may have been removed from your MIS. Check will your school's MIS administrator.

Why aren't student names showing correctly?

  • Contact your school's MIS administrator to check that the student's information is correct in your MIS

  • We import 'preferred' names by default - contact us using the 'Help & Support' button in your Sparx Maths site if you need us to change this to 'legal' names for the whole school (we cannot do this for individual students).

Why aren't new students appearing in Sparx Maths?

  • Check they've been added to your MIS correctly

  • The student may only just have been added to your MIS (allow up to 24 hours for the changes to show in Sparx Maths, or perform a manual sync, as described above)

  • If students are added to Sparx Maths after a homework has been set for their class, they will not appear on the Hand-In page for that week, but will appear on the class list in Student Manager

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