Every question has a tailored support video showing a similar worked example designed to be short and focused on key learning points. Encouraging students to watch the support videos when they are stuck rather than seeking immediate help builds resistance and independence, and will also help us learn more about what questions the student finds challenging.

Where possible, the complete worked example is shown on the first screen of the video, with the audio and animation providing a more in-depth explanation.
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In the case of longer, problem-solving style questions, the first screen suggests steps or provides useful information, and students can choose to watch the whole video to access the full solution to the worked example.
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Students get a second and third chance at the same question after an incorrect attempt. This allows them to learn from mistakes and encourages showing working.

After additional incorrect attempts, students receive a slightly different variant to encourage students to start from the beginning and check they are using the correct method.

For some questions, we will give the student a hint if they have nearly answered the question correctly but have made a minor error. Some examples of these cases are:

Here are some possible actions to help your student re-engage with their Sparx Maths work:

During long-term absence, you can:

Sparx makes some adjustments to students who have not engaged in Sparx for some time:

Please keep in mind that Sparx Maths is designed for practicing topics already learned in class rather than learning a topic for the first time, so we do not recommend setting a student work in Sparx to catch up on missed lessons.

Each question in Sparx has a small number of variations so if students could see the answers, eventually they would have seen all available examples and could start guessing or predicting the correct answers. This would in turn affect our assessment of their ability and level, resulting in diluted personalised homework.

The increasing availability, capability and accuracy of maths solving apps and AI services like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, mean that it’s becoming more common for students to use them when completing their homework. This challenge is broad-reaching - it potentially affects any work that we ask students to complete at home, be that via worksheets, text books or online services like Sparx Maths.

We’ve been carefully considering the feedback that we’ve been receiving about the impact of this challenge on Sparx Maths homework. We are committed to finding effective solutions and we’re working with members of the Sparx Maths community to do so. For the latest information, see the related discussion thread on the Sparx Maths feedback board (you’ll need to be logged in to your Sparx Maths site to access the board).

Whilst we establish longer-term solutions to this challenge, there are some approaches that you can take to monitor for the potential use of maths solving apps and AI services: