This article shares recommendations on encouraging your team to engage with Sparx Maths and use it to its full potential.
Share key features and benefits
When introducing Sparx Maths to your team, we recommend you emphasise these core benefits:
Personalised Learning: Students receive homework tailored to their current attainment level
Reduced Admin: Automatic marking and homework setting saves teacher time
Clear Monitoring: The Hand-in page shows real-time homework completion data
Parent Engagement: Automated weekly parent emails support student progress
Evidence-Based: Research shows significant impact on student outcomes
Complete the training
All staff should complete the interactive Sparx training modules (30 - 45 minutes) before setting homework, as these cover essential features and best practices. Consider coming together as a department to encourage discussion of the features, or setting a clear deadline for training completion.
To monitor staff training progress, navigate to the Staff Manager page and view the Training Progress column.
Build consistent approaches
Having clear guidance about how homework should be monitored across the department team will help ensure consistency and reduce the cognitive load of decision-making for both teachers and students.
Setting hand-in and hand-out days
Setting hand-in and hand-out days
The choice of hand-out and hand-in days should be considered carefully to ensure that:
Teachers have enough time to monitor progress toward completion
There is time to give support and encouragement to students
When choosing your hand-out/hand-in days and times, consider having:
The same hand-out and hand-in days across the school or year group - this helps support clear and consistent messaging about expectations
A weekend between hand-out and hand-in days - this gives students more time to complete their work
We recommend having a Wednesday hand-in day. If this is not possible we recommend avoiding a Monday hand-in, as we've seen that schools that do so have statistically lower completion rates.
Monitoring homework completion
Monitoring homework completion
Having a homework monitoring policy that both teachers and students understand and stick to is essential for getting the best outcomes for your students. Schools that have a clear homework monitoring strategy have found that teachers are better able to support students in their work, which results in high homework completion rates and subsequently more rapid progress through the content.
Take a look at our video explaining a data-driven insight into how to significantly improve homework completion with regular use of the hand-in page:
There is an example of a homework cycle here with questions to think about when implementing this across your department.
You can also consider:
Using the Hand-In Summary page regularly in class. See Monitoring homework completion for more information.
Parent communication - Our data shows that turning on parent emails has a significant impact on homework completion. See Why and how we engage parents with Sparx Maths for more information.
Rewards
Rewards
Most schools we have spoken to find that using a consistent mixture of rewards and sanctions is the best way to motivate their students to complete their Sparx homework on time. In terms of rewards, many schools use XP to measure effort and reward accordingly.
You can also look at the XP leaderboard to reward high XP over custom timeframes. To make this as hassle-free as possible we include a certificate generator that will generate custom-made certificates for you to give out to students. The student's name, class, level and date achieved, and awarding teacher's name will be filled in before printing.
See Student rewards and recognition for more information about how Sparx can help reward students.
We’ve listed a non-exhaustive list of rewards ideas here for some inspiration:
Half termly raffle
Pass to skip the lunch queue
Postcards home to parents
Linking Sparx XP to an existing school reward system
Mentions on social media
Certificate assemblies
Pizza party
Lollipop/Biscuit Friday
Using a homework club to support students
Using a homework club to support students
To get the best results from Sparx Maths Homework, we highly recommend giving students the opportunity to access a regular homework club, ideally before their hand-in deadline.
Homework clubs can be vital in supporting students who need a quiet space, or who don't always have access to a device or the internet at home.
They can also be key in helping students who may still be stuck after watching the support videos and need a little help to finish their last questions.
Having this support in place makes it easier for class teachers to encourage independence in their students, and to uphold high expectations for full homework completion.
Sparx schools run their homework clubs in a variety of ways, from offering daily whole-school homework clubs in the library to lunchtime clubs run by student mentors or drop-in sessions run by the maths department.
Ongoing support for your team
Ongoing support for your team
We recommend making time for your department to regularly share how they are getting on with each other during department meetings. This will give everyone the chance to share things that are going well and to support each other with implementation challenges.