Sparx Maths QLA Spreadsheets

What is a QLA spreadsheet?

A question level analysis sheet (QLA) is a spreadsheet for recording individual question scores on an assessment to achieve an overall analysis of a student or a class performance. You can generate personalised student reports to give to each student for use in revision.

How can QLAs benefit teachers and students?

Our QLAs are designed to be used with practice examination papers, and will help you to identify topic strengths and weaknesses for the students in your classes. Once your students have completed an examination paper, you can fill in the results on the spreadsheet. An individualised report will be generated for each student, showing them how they performed on each question, as well as the Sparx Maths topics which relate to each question.

Using Independent Learning, students can search for the topics they wish to improve on using the Sparx topic codes.

Click here to learn more about best practice when using QLAs.

QLA downloads

KS3

GCSE

International GCSE

Template QLA

Are you looking for a different QLA from the ones above?
Try using our Sparx Maths template to create your own. 

How to use Sparx Maths QLA spreadsheets

The QLA spreadsheets contain 3 tabs - Marksheet, Pupils Report, Teacher Report.

Main instructions

Enter the following information into the marksheet tab:

• Teacher name

• Class name

• Student names

• Student marks per question

All the other tabs will auto-populate.

Once this information has been entered into the Marksheet tab: 

• Switch to the Pupil Report tab to view the individual student reports. These are designed to print as one per page. More information about this below.

• Switch to the Teacher Report tab to see the whole class report. This uses the average marks per question to give you an overview of how well your class performed on each question.

Using the marksheet tab

The marksheet contains several helpful pieces of information:

• The Sparx topic(s) which corresponds to the question

• The average class mark for each question.

• The colour of each cell is selected from a gradient of colours, based on how the average mark compares to the total mark for the question.

• This average mark will not include any blank spaces, only those which have a number.

• The total mark for each question.

• The question number.

• The individual student mark for each question.

• The colour of each cell is based on how the student's mark compares to the total mark for the question.

For questions which have not been attempted there are a couple of ways you may wish to use the sheet:

Option 1 - Use blank spaces for questions which have not been attempted and 0's for questions which have been attempted but gained no marks.

This will mean that unattempted questions will not be included in the calculation for the average marks.  Only the marks of students who have attempted the question will be included. This allows teachers to consider students who have not attempted questions separately; and to see which questions were generally not attempted by the class.

Option 2 - Use 0's for students who have not attempted the question and who have attempted but have gained no marks.

In this case the average will include all students.

Any formatting that applies on the marksheet will apply similarly in the reports.

Using the Pupil Report tab

This page is designed to populate automatically once you have filled in the marksheet.

Each report will print on its own page, allowing you to give individual revision suggestions to your students.

Pupil reports will highlight areas that students could focus on to improve. We give the topic area which best matches the exam question. Students can then use Independent Learning to find the topic.

There are a couple of things to remember when using Independent Learning. 

• When looking up the topic, students should be careful to choose the most relevant Objective within the topic.

• If students can’t find anything related to their search, a good idea is to change the level as we may have content elsewhere.

• If students use the topic code to search for the topic they will need to ensure that the correct curriculum is selected using the drop down options. 

Each topic code referenced in the QLA begins with a letter that corresponds to a particular curriculum.

Using the Teacher Report tab

Similar to the Pupil Report page, the Teacher Report page will also populate automatically once you have filled in the marksheet.

The average class marks for each question are shown.

The colour of each cell is based on how the average mark compares to the total mark for the question.

Teacher reports highlight areas which may require a whole class recap, as well as where the class is most confident.