Formatting your CSV

Please note: Only CSV format is supported. Other formats such as Microsoft Excel will need to be saved in a CSV format before they can be imported into Sparx Maths.

Using the template

If opening the template CSV file from within Microsoft Excel and you are prompted to select how you want to import the text:

Select ‘Delimited’ when importing the text

Select the ‘Comma’ option under the ‘Delimiters’ heading

Select ‘Finish’

This should format the template in the correct way so that you can add your student data in the appropriate columns.

Building your CSV from scratch

You must include a header row

Column 1: Student's first name (required)

Column 2: Student's surname (required)

Column 3: Student's date of birth which must be in yyyy-mm-dd format (e.g. 2008-01-10 for 10th January 2008) (required)

Column 4: Student's gender which can be any of: Male; Female; Neutral; Other; Unknown

Column 5: The student's email address (only required if your school uses our Microsoft or Google Single Sign-On feature)

Column 6: The student's class (required)

Column 7: The year group that the student belongs to (e.g. for most UK secondary schools this will be 'Year 7', 'Year 8', 'Year 9' etc.) (required)

Column 8: Email address(es) for the student's parent(s)/carer(s). If you include multiple email addresses, they must be comma separated (e.g. email1@example.com, email2@example.com, email3@example.com)

You don't have to provide a gender, student email or parent email addresses to import a student, but you must still include those columns in your CSV file.

Common errors

CSV formatting errors

Not including a header row (this can lead to your first row of student data being ignored)

Placing your columns in the wrong order or omitting some columns

Entering students' dates of birth in the wrong format (they must be in yyyy-mm-dd format)

Entering email addresses in the wrong format (watch out for accidental spaces in the email address, and ensure that your full school domain name is included)

Year groups should always be formatted 'Year <number>'

Missing data errors

Leaving a student's first name, last name, date of birth, class or year group blank

Incorrect data errors

For existing students, if the first name, last name or date of birth that you include in your CSV data doesn't exactly match what we already hold in Sparx Maths, the import process will think that you're trying to create a new student. A common sign that you're hitting this problem (where you include email addresses for your students) is that you'll get an error message advising that the student's email address is already in use by another student.