📝 Study and homework tools · ➗ Math apps and platforms
Sparx Maths
By Sparx Learning. Visit Sparx Maths
Desk research from the maker's own pages. Not yet tried by us. Checked 2026-10-24.
UK maths homework software for ages 11-16. Each week a teacher picks the topics taught in class and Sparx builds a personalized set of questions for each student, with a target of getting 100% right. Every question has a short help video, 'bookwork checks' make students write their working on paper, and parents can follow homework in a Parent Portal and get an email before it's due. Schools subscribe; the same company makes Sparx Reader and Sparx Science.
Our take: Families get it through school; it suits steady weekly practice, and parents should tell teachers if the target becomes a source of stress.
| Ages it suits | 11-16 (UK Key Stage 3 and GCSE) |
|---|---|
| What its terms say about age | School-only. The terms are a contract with the school, which shares student data and handles consent; no age rule for students is stated. (terms) |
| Price | Through schools. School subscription, pricing not public; schools can trial it first. |
| Works on | Web |
| Account | A school account |
| Ads | None |
| In-app purchases | None |
| The AI in it | Algorithms set each student's questions using spaced repetition and data from billions of answers; AI marking of written answers is used only in Sparx Science. |
What's good
- Homework pitched to each student
- Video help on every question
- Pushes written working, not just clicking
- Student data kept out of third-party AI training
Watch for
- Compulsory when the school uses it
- 100%-correct target can stress some students
- Needs a device and internet at home
- Anonymised data kept for Sparx's business use
Data and privacy
Schools send names, gender, year group, date of birth and pupil number, and may add free-school-meal or English-learner status; Sparx records answers, time and features used. It says student data is excluded from training any third-party AI model, keeps school data up to two years after a school leaves, then keeps anonymised data for its own research and business use. Read the privacy policy.
Does it work?
A RAND Europe and University of Cambridge analysis, commissioned by Sparx, of 3,956 Year 7-8 students in 14 schools linked more Sparx use with better maths results; it shows an association, not cause. Sparx also cites its own randomized trials on homework length.
In the Big Index
- The maker in the who's who: Sparx Learning
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Where these facts come from
- https://sparxmaths.com/
- https://sparxmaths.com/parents/
- https://sparxmaths.com/impact/
- https://sparx-learning.com/
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W8C2CDDzjeL6mLkjeHC7LDvKSD-Qqq7r/view
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q4uqMnEpiZSpV9BD9pSpI2w57fcbcHam/view
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/10EI422ymh3rn1HYmhbP0Yq7FIZPcTQ5-/view
- https://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/programmes/sparx/SparxKeyFindings.pdf
Prices, terms and features change. Nobody paid to be listed, nothing here is an affiliate link, and Peabody never rates itself. Where we and the maker disagree, the maker's own pages are the ones to trust.