Guide for parents · September 2026
Free Maths Check Support Built Around Your Child
What the free maths check contains: 20 questions across 18 skills from Year 5 to Year 9, about 12 minutes, no card, and what the report says.
What is in it
Twenty questions, drawn from a bank covering eighteen maths skills, taking about twelve minutes. It is free, and it does not ask for a card. Those numbers are the whole offer, and they are worth stating before anything else, because "free assessment" on an education site usually means a sample of something and a price at the end.
The eighteen skills are not spread evenly across the subject. They concentrate where secondary maths actually breaks: place value, multiplication and division facts, negative numbers, six separate fraction skills, factors and multiples, percentages in both directions, converting fractions to decimals, sharing in a ratio, and three steps of early algebra. There is no geometry, no statistics and no measure. That is a deliberate narrowing rather than an oversight — those are the skills that other topics are built on top of.
The questions are ordinary, and that is the point
Nothing here is a puzzle. The check asks what the digit 7 is worth in 4,732, what 12 times 7 is, and what you get from −4 + 9. It asks which fraction is equivalent to 3/4, what 10/15 simplifies to, and what 3/8 + 2/8 comes to. It asks for 1/3 + 1/4, then 2/3 + 1/5, then 3/4 − 1/3. It asks for 25 per cent of 60, for what 3/5 is as a percentage, and for 3/4 as a decimal. It asks for 2/3 × 1/4 and for 1/2 ÷ 1/4. It asks for the larger share when £60 is split two to one. It asks a child to simplify 3x + 2x, to find 2x + 3 when x is 4, and to solve 2x + 5 = 13.
A child who has understood the ideas finds most of this dull. That is the design. A check made of hard questions tells you the child found it hard; a check made of foundational questions tells you which foundation moved.
How the twelve minutes are spent
The opening difficulty comes from the school year you enter, which spans Year 5 to Year 9. Year 5 starts on the easiest band, Year 6 one above, Years 7 and 8 above that, and Year 9 at the top. Questions carry the year range they suit, so the set is ordered to put the fitting ones first and then work outwards by difficulty.
When an answer is wrong, the check does not simply mark it and carry on. It goes to the skills that the failed one depends on. A wrong answer on 1/3 + 1/4 pulls in the lowest common multiple of 3 and 4, then equivalent fractions, then addition with matching denominators. That branch is the reason twelve minutes can say something a longer test of this term's topic cannot: it finds the floor, not the ceiling.
Some wrong answers also carry a label. Adding the denominators, subtracting the denominators, choosing a common denominator that is not common, simplifying by a number that does not divide both parts, and losing a sign in a negative-number question are all recognised patterns rather than generic errors.
What the report gives you back
| Section | What it means |
|---|---|
| A score for each skill | The share of that skill's questions answered correctly |
| Mastered | Eighty per cent or more on that skill |
| Practising | Between fifty and seventy-nine per cent |
| Learning | Below fifty per cent |
| Strongest | Up to three skills at seventy per cent or above |
| Needs attention | Up to four skills below sixty per cent, weakest first |
| Biggest opportunity | The single lowest-scoring skill |
The last row is the one to act on. It is deliberately one thing rather than a list, because a parent given four priorities on a Tuesday evening will act on none of them.
What it is not
It is not a SATs prediction, a CAT score, a reading age or any kind of standardised comparison against other children. There is no percentile, because twenty questions cannot honestly produce one. It does not diagnose dyscalculia or any other specific learning difficulty — that needs a qualified assessor and a proper process, and a twelve-minute online quiz claiming otherwise should be treated with suspicion.
It is also not a school report. The school has seen your child work for months; this has seen twenty answers. Where the two disagree, the school has more evidence, though the check sometimes explains a report that made no sense.
Getting an honest result
Three things spoil it. Sitting with your child and prompting produces a picture of your maths, not theirs. Doing it at the end of a long day produces a picture of tiredness. And telling a child it is a test produces a picture of how they handle tests. Twelve minutes on a calm afternoon, with the phrasing kept low-key, gives you something usable.
Paper and pencil beside them is fine and probably wise; the fraction and algebra questions are not meant to be done mentally.
Questions parents ask about the maths check
Twelve minutes seems too short to tell you anything.
A long test measures performance more precisely. A short one that branches to prerequisites locates a cause. Those are different jobs, and for a parent deciding what to do next, the location matters more than the precision.
My child guessed on the multiple-choice questions.
Some of them are multiple choice and some need a typed answer, including the fraction and algebra ones, which cannot be guessed usefully. A guessed right answer inflates one skill score; the follow-up questions on the same skill usually undo it.
Can we do it more than once?
Yes, and the spacing is what makes a repeat meaningful. Re-checking after a few weeks of practice on the weakest skill tells you something. Re-checking the next day tells you whether your child remembers a test.
Does this cover the whole maths curriculum?
No, and it does not attempt to. Eighteen skills is a foundation audit, not a curriculum sweep, and no claim is made about covering the programme of study in England or any other nation's.