Preparing your site for a new academic year

Why you need to reset your site

Your Sparx Maths site focuses on one academic year at a time. All of your classes, schemes of learning, homework plans and students' homework completion data 'live' in a specific academic year. 

When you reach your academic year end date in Sparx Maths (for most UK schools, this is 31st August), your site will move into reset mode. During this time:

• you won't be able to set any new homework
• students will still be able to log in to complete any incomplete homework, or work in Independent Learning
• you will still be able to review hand-in data for the year that's ended

To begin setting homework again, you'll need to reset your Sparx Maths site (which prepares it for your new academic year), import your new classes and students, and complete the setup of those classes.

Getting guidance through the reset process

Whilst your site is in reset mode, you'll see messaging throughout the site, guiding you to your new school year setup page, for example:

And:

Your new school year setup page is tailored to your school, showing you:

• the steps that need to be completed before you can start setting homework in your new school year
• the current status of those steps for your school
• guidance around completing each step

Things to know before you reset your site

Most steps on your new school year setup page (for example, setting up your schemes of learning and holiday dates) can be completed before or after you reset your site, but we recommend that you don't reset your site until you know that your class and student data for the new school year is ready.

For schools that use an MIS connection to import classes and students

We know that it can sometimes take a little while for class lists to be added to your school's MIS at the start of a new school year. We'll therefore tell you under the MIS status tab of your new school year setup page whether we think your MIS is ready to go or not. 

Please note that every school's MIS setup is different, so this information is for guidance only. If you have any concerns about whether or not your school's MIS is ready, please speak to your school's MIS administrator before proceeding to reset your site.

For schools that import classes and students via CSV

We recommend that you don't proceed to reset your site until you're happy that you have your CSV import file ready, containing your student and class data for the new school year.

Resetting your site

When you reset your Sparx Maths site:

• Last year's classes and student will be removed from your Sparx Maths site, but we'll still remember your students' homework difficulty levels, XP totals, reward levels and times tables progress.
• Students won't be able to log in to Sparx Maths until you import your classes for the new academic year.
• You won't be able to access last year's homework completion data. If you wish to retain a copy of your completion data, we recommend that you download a copy of your school's student activity report before you reset your site. See the Student activity report article for more information.

To reset your Sparx Maths site:

1.  From your new school year setup page, click on the 'Reset your Sparx site' tab
2. Then click on the We're ready to reset our Sparx site button, after which you'll be prompted to confirm the reset

Setting up your classes and students ready for the new school year

Once you've reset your site, you'll be able to import your classes and students ready for the new school year. Note that students won't be able to log in to Sparx Maths until you've done this.

Once you've imported classes and student, the Import classes & students section of the new school year setup page will highlight issues that you may wish to review.

The Classes with issues tab helps you to understand whether your classes are ready for their first homeworks of the new school year, highlighting when a class:

• Doesn't yet have an associated scheme of learning (if you don't do this, you'll need to manually add topics to the Planner each week)
• Doesn't yet have teachers assigned (if you don't do this, teachers won't be able to easily see 'their classes' throughout the site)
• Doesn't yet have an attainment level set (important for classes that contain students starting with Sparx Maths for the first time, so we can best tailor their first homeworks)
• Has students that haven't yet logged in (we recommend that you get all students logged in before setting first homework so you know that they'll be able to access the homework)
• Doesn't yet have homework turned on (students won't start receiving homework until you do this)

The Students needing review tab highlights when one or more settings have been changed from the default for a student, covering:

• The student's homework type (for example, you may decide that a student set optional-only homework is ready for compulsory homework again this year) 
• The student's homework difficulty level (for example, you may decide that a student with a lower level setting is ready for more challenging homework this year)
• Whether the times tables element of homework is turned on or off
• Whether higher-only topics are excluded from the student's homework

The start of a new school year is a good opportunity to review whether any of the following should be reverted to the default. If you want to revert any students to the default settings, tick the box next to their name and click Reset to Sparx Maths defaults.

Getting ahead of the game

Whilst your site won't enter reset mode until your academic year has ended, you can start setting up your schemes of learning and holidays dates for next academic year at any time. See the following articles for more information: 

• Adding your school holidays
• Creating a scheme of learning