Sparx Maths provides several tools to help you monitor your students' homework completion and progress. This article explains the different ways you can track homework completion, from whole-school down to individual student level.
Get a quick overview of current homework completion for all of your classes via the Dashboard
Get a quick overview of current homework completion for all of your classes via the Dashboard
When you log in to your Sparx Maths site, you'll be taken to the Dashboard
The 'Homework hand-in' section of the 'Teacher view' on the Dashboard shows how many student have completed, partially completed or not started their homework for every class that you're linked to in Class Manager.
See Getting a class ready for its first homework for information on how to link teachers for classes.
The 'Department view' on the Dashboard shows the same information, but for all classes in your school.
It also displays insights that highlight classes and students that have made notable achievements in the last week, for praise purposes:
The class that had the highest completion rate
The class with the most improved hand-in rate
The number of/which students have achieved a new XP level
The class with the highest average XP per student
View high-level statistics of homework completion across year groups and classes
View high-level statistics of homework completion across year groups and classes
The Homework Statistics page can be accessed via Reporting -> Homework Statistics page. It allows you to view:
Year group and class-level completion rates for the last 6 weeks
Overall average completion rates comparing year groups
Detailed breakdowns for:
Compulsory homework
XP Boost homework
Target homework
See homework completion insights for a class via the Hand-in Summary page
See homework completion insights for a class via the Hand-in Summary page
For your chosen class, the Hand-in Summary page provides and at-a-glance view of students' homework completion, and 'shout outs' than you can use to recognise students that are showing positive progress with their Sparx Maths homework.
Choose the Hand-in page from the main menu
Choose the class that you want to work with, from the class selector in the header
Click the 'Hand-in Summary' button
The 'Completion' tab groups students by
Those who've not yet started the selected week's homework ('Get going')
Those who've started but not finished the homework ('Partial completion')
Those who've completed their homework ('Complete')
These groupings can help you to focus interventions where they're most needed.
The 'Shout-Outs' tab shows you:
The students who completed this week's homework the earliest ('Earliest completion')
Any students who completed their compulsory homework this week after not finishing it last week ('Bouncing back')
Any students who moved up an XP Level during this homework week ('Levelled up').
See live homework completion data via the Hand-in page
See live homework completion data via the Hand-in page
For your chosen class, the Hand-in page shows each student's homework completion progress for the current week and information that can help you to identify when students might be struggling, or due praise.
Access the Hand-in page from the main menu
Choose the class that you want to work with, from the class selector in the header
The Completion bar against each student shows how much of their compulsory homework they've completed
Green sections show the proportion of questions answered correctly
Red sections show the proportion of questions answered incorrectly
Blue sections show the proportion of questions where the support video was watched, but the student still hasn't answered the question correctly
Grey sections show the proportion of questions not yet answered
Working time shows you approximately how much time each student has spent completing their homework
Completion day tells you whether and when each student completed their homework (relative to the hand-in day). You may also see 'Not opened' where the student didn't access this week's homework, or 'Late' when the student completed the homework after the hand-in date and time.
Alerts will show a purple 'seek help' flag when a student has watched the support video for a question and still been unable to answer it correctly after 6 attempts
To see which question the student is struggling with, click on their completion bar or the flag to view their answer history. The purple seek help flag appears against the question.
When you see this, you may want to check in with the student to ensure that they understand the skills that they need to answer the question
Seek help flagging is automatic - it doesn't indicate that a student has manually chosen to seek help with a question.
Bookwork accuracy shows you the extent to which students are correctly completing their bookwork checks
When the gauge is full and green, this indicates that students are completing all of their bookwork checks correctly - this means they are writing down their workings and answers to help them to embed their learning and prepare for exams
When the gauge is low and red, this indicates that students are completing few to none of their bookwork checks correctly - you may wish to remind students with low accuracy scores of the importance of maintaining good bookwork
For more information, see Understanding bookwork checks
Optional Homework shows each student's XP Boost and Target completion percentages
For more information, see Key concepts of a Sparx Maths homework
IL Time shows you approximately how much time each student has spent answering questions in Independent Learning
For more information, see Independent Learning
The Previous Compulsory column gives you an at-a-glance view of up to 6 weeks' previous compulsory homework for each student (a green tick signifying 100% completion and a red percentage indicating incomplete homework). You can also see all of the above information for previous weeks, using the week tabs at the top of the page.
See the question and answer history for a specific student
See the question and answer history for a specific student
For a given student and homework week, the Student Answer History page allows you to see detailed information about the student's activity in Sparx Maths. From the Hand-in Page, click on the student's completion bar.
By default, you'll be shown detailed activity for the student's compulsory homework. Use the 'Homework type' drop-down if you want to see detail for XP Boost or Target homework instead.
You'll find summary statistics at the top of the screen.
You'll see a breakdown of questions included in the student's homework on the left-hand side
The 'set this week' section shows questions from topics that you placed in the Planner for the class, organised by topic
The 'consolidation' section shows questions from topics that the student has covered in previous homeworks, organised by topic
Each question in the student's homework is represented by a coloured square, which you can click on to view more detail about the student's attempts at the question
Green squares indicate that the student answered the question correctly (if a previous attempt was incorrect but they ultimately answered correctly, you'll see a green square)
Red squares indicate that the student has attempted the question but all attempts so far have been incorrect
Blank grey squares indicate that the student hasn't yet looked at the question
Grey squares with an eye icon indicate that the student has looked at the question but not attempted to answer it
The numbers in each square show how many attempts the student has made at the question
Some squares may have flags against them to help you to identify questions where the student may have struggled
An orange book icon indicates that the student failed a bookwork check about this question (suggesting that they may not have written down their workings and answer for this question)
A yellow swap icon indicates that the student chose to swap out the original question for an alternative (suggesting that they were struggling to answer the first question)
A purple flag icon indicates that the student was advised to seek help with this question (indicating that they watched the support video but still answered the question incorrectly 6 or more times - they'll likely need help to complete this question)
A black video icon indicates that the student chose to watch the support video for this question (suggesting that they may have needed some additional guidance to help them to answer the question)
The 'Timeline' tab allows you to alternatively view the student's activity for the homework in reverse chronological order.
Get updates about planned homework and students' homework progress via email
Get updates about planned homework and students' homework progress via email
In Class Manager, you can link teachers to classes and enable teacher emails. See Getting a class ready for its first homework for more information on how to do this. This will send three emails per week to the teacher:
Planned homework email
Planned homework email
Sent 2 days before homework is set
Subject: These homework topics are about to go out
Includes a reminder of topics included
Link to Planner page to make any changes before homework is set
Homework update email
Homework update email
Sent 2 days before hand-in
Subject: Homework due soon for X classes
Link to Hand-in page to identify students at risk of not completing their homework
Link to the Insights page to identify topics that the class may need more help with
Homework report email
Homework report email
Sent on hand-in day
Subject: See how your classes did in homework due today
Link to the Hand-In page to follow up with students that didn't complete their homework, and praise and reward for students that did
Link to the Insights page to identify topics that the class may need more help with
Quickly identify students with outstanding homework across the whole school via the Incomplete Homework page
Quickly identify students with outstanding homework across the whole school via the Incomplete Homework page
Headteachers, heads of year, curriculum leads and tutors may find it useful to be able to see which students have outstanding incomplete homeworks across the school.
Choose 'Incomplete homework' from the 'Reporting' menu
Choose the year group or class that you want to work with, from the class selector in the header. If you want to see incomplete homework for all classes across the school, choose 'All classes'
Students in your selected group will be listed. By default the list is sorted by students with the most outstanding previous homeworks.
For each student, you'll see completion information about the current homework (under the 'compulsory completion' column) and up to 6 previous homeworks (under the 'previous compulsory' column).
The compulsory completion bar works the same as the completion bar on the Hand-in page. See the See live homework completion data for every student in a class via the Hand-in page section above for more information.
For more detail, click on the compulsory completion bar, or a previous compulsory completion percentage to jump to the hand in page for the corresponding week/student.
Frequently asked questions
Why didn't some students see the topics that I placed into the Planner?
Why didn't some students see the topics that I placed into the Planner?
For a 60 minute homework we recommend adding no more than 3 topics to the Planner. The more topics you add, there less chance there is that students will cover them all in their compulsory homework.
If we can't fit all topics into compulsory homework, we'll try to accommodate them in XP Boost homework. We'll also try to ensure that they're covered in future consolidation homework.
Students' working speed can also affect the topic they see in their homework. To ensure a consistent homework length across a class, students will see fewer questions if we deem them to have a slower working speed.
Why are some students seeing topics that I didn't place into the Planner?
Why are some students seeing topics that I didn't place into the Planner?
Approximately 40% of a student's homework will focus on consolidation of topics covered in previous homeworks. This will typically show as 'Mixed topic practice' on the Student Answer History page. Hover over the Mixed topic practice title to see information about the topics/weeks that are being consolidated.
If you're at the beginning of a new academic year, students may have brought topics with them from their previous class, which will affect the consolidation homework for their new class. See Making changes to upcoming homework plans for a class for more information.
If we deem that a topic is likely to be too challenging for a student, we may sometimes fall back to a support topic that will help the student to practice the skills that they'll need to be able to comfortably answer the questions in the assigned topic.
When this happens, hovering over the topic title on the Student Answer History page will show 'Set automatically as support for <assigned topic>'
Why do the working times displayed differ from the time that my students tell me they spent on their homework, or from the homework length that I set for the class/student?
Why do the working times displayed differ from the time that my students tell me they spent on their homework, or from the homework length that I set for the class/student?
The working time shown in Sparx represents active time spent on homework:
It only counts time spent answering questions or watching videos
It excludes idle time or time spent on other activities
For a 60-minute homework, expect around 45-50 minutes of working time
Whilst there may be fluctuations in homework length from week to week, over the course of the year all students should on average spend the expected amount of time on their homework.
You can see how long a student has spent on their compulsory homework each week, and their average working time for the current academic year, on the Student Summary page.
We set homework assuming that the student will be fully focussed while working. If a student is distracted or not working in a focussed way then they may take longer than expected to complete their homework.
Can I see the time at which a student completed their homework?
Can I see the time at which a student completed their homework?
We don't explicitly show students' homework completion times in Sparx Maths, but you can do the following:
You can see the time that a student last logged in to Sparx Maths via Student Manager (under the 'Login status' column)
You can see approximately when the student answered the last question in a homework from the 'Timeline' view on the Student Answer History page.
Why can't I see any homework completion activity for a class/student?
Why can't I see any homework completion activity for a class/student?
If you've just set up a class, you won't see activity until the first homework has been handed out. Check the Planner page to see when the first homework is due to be handed out.
If you can see homework completion activity for some students in a class but not others, it's likely that students with no activity haven't started their homework.
If some students are missing, this will likely be because they haven't been added to the class in Sparx Maths, or they were added to the class after the homework was set (in which case, they won't receive homework until the next homework hand-out date for the class).
Why am I not receiving teacher emails?
Why am I not receiving teacher emails?
Please check:
That your email address is correct in Staff Manager
That the emails aren't being sent to your spam or junk email folder
That teacher emails are enabled for all of your classes in Class Manager
That your school network isn't blocking emails from @sparx.co.uk and @sparxmaths.uk domains
Why do the week numbers that are displayed throughout my Sparx Maths site not match the number of homeworks that I've set?
Why do the week numbers that are displayed throughout my Sparx Maths site not match the number of homeworks that I've set?
Week numbers correspond to the academic year calendar rather than the number of homeworks set. For most UK schools, Week 1 starts in the week containing 1st September.