A maths diagnostic for primary school teachers

Find out what your students are actually thinking — not just whether they got it right or wrong.

What they know · what they need next · a school-report comment · a parent-friendly summary.

All multiple choice — no marking. The tool does the analysis for you.

Most assessments tell you who got it wrong. They don't tell you why.

You end up with a heat-map of percentages and a vague feeling that certain topics "need more work." The real picture — what each student is actually thinking — is left to you to infer from a stack of answer sheets.

The diagnostic does that thinking-work for you. Every wrong answer on the screener is engineered to point at a specific misconception. A few examples are below — look at the wrong-answer notes under each.

"I can see they didn't get it. I just don't have time to sit with twenty-four kids one at a time and work out what each of them was thinking."

Every wrong answer points at a specific misconception.

In a well-designed multiple-choice question, each wrong answer is a window into a specific way of thinking. There are no random distractors. If a student picks B instead of A, you know exactly which mental model produced B — and which lesson it needs.

1/2 + 1/3 = ?

A 5/6 Correct — found a common denominator and scaled the numerators.
B 2/5 Added tops and bottoms separately (the marquee Year 5 misconception).
C 2/6 Found the right common denominator but forgot to scale the numerators.
D 1/6 Applied the multiplication procedure to an addition question.

Three distinct misconceptions, three different next lessons. The report tells you which of your students sits in each group.

Every question on the screener is engineered the same way. The diagnostic engine reads each student's pattern of answers and tells you which misconception each child is currently working from — and which next lesson it points to.

Multiple choice all the way through. No marking required.

There's no marking, no question-by-question analysis, no evening spent at the kitchen table working through a pile of student work. You print the paper screener, sit each student down with it, click the option each one chose, and hit generate. The diagnostic engine does the rest.

A whole class — diagnosed, prioritised, with concrete teaching plans — without sitting down to mark anything. The work that usually drains your weekend is what the tool is built to do for you.

What you'll get.

A complete diagnostic workflow — paper, screen, and report — that runs on any laptop, online or offline.

01

A printable paper screener.

24 questions across the eight MCQ-able Foundation Number objectives. Untimed and administered one-on-one.

02

An offline response-entry tool.

A single HTML file you open in any browser. Add your students, click the option each one chose, hit generate. No data leaves your computer.

03

A teacher-ready Excel report.

Class-summary grid, scope-and-sequence heat-map, top-three class trends, curriculum-coverage view, and one tab per student with a parent-ready summary and a paste-ready school report comment.

04

Concrete teaching plans — not vague advice.

For every top misconception, the report includes a step-by-step activity with specific numbers, exact teaching language, duration, materials, and frequency. Designed to be picked up and used on Monday.

A sample of the report — this one from Foundation (Prep).

Generated from a class of 24 fake students, using the Foundation version of the tool. The same report style runs at every year level. Click between the tabs to see the class-summary grid, the scope-and-sequence heat-map, the class trends with teaching plans, and one student's individual tab.

Sample_Diagnostic.xlsx

Class summary — student-by-skill grid, with concrete examples and curriculum codes for each column. Each cell is colour-coded by band.

More examples, from across the primary years.

Three more questions — one each from Year 1, Year 3, and Year 5 — showing the same misconception-encoded structure at very different ages.

Year 1

Tens and ones

10 + 3 = ?
  • 13Correct — sees ten and three as thirteen.
  • 31Digit reversal.
  • 4Treated both digits as ones (1 + 3).
  • 103Concatenated "10" and "3".

The diagnostic tells you why a Year 1 child wrote 31 for thirteen.

Year 3

Multiplicative word problems

Mr Lee has 24 stickers. He gives 4 stickers to each student. How many students get stickers altogether?
  • 6Correct — divided 24 by 4.
  • 28Fell for the "altogether" keyword trap (added).
  • 20Subtracted instead of dividing.
  • 96Multiplied instead of dividing.

The diagnostic catches kids who read keywords rather than structure.

Year 5

Add unlike-denominator fractions

1/2 + 1/3 = ?
  • 5/6Correct.
  • 2/5Added tops AND bottoms.
  • 2/6Right common denominator, didn't scale numerators.
  • 1/6Applied multiplication procedure to addition.

Distinguishes fraction-as-quantity confusion from forgot-to-scale.

Your students' data never leaves your computer.

Student names and responses are not stored anywhere. The diagnostic runs entirely in your browser, on your laptop, on your desk.

Schools are under more pressure than ever about where student data lives. Most other assessment tools ask you to upload names, responses, and reports to a third-party cloud. This one doesn't. You enter the responses, click generate, an Excel file appears in your Downloads folder, and the tool forgets everything. The privacy promise is in the architecture — not in a policy document.

Who it's for.

Classroom teachers

Foundation through Year 6, government / Catholic / independent. Sit each student down with the screener, enter the responses, walk away with a class plan for the next fortnight.

Intervention specialists

Learning support, EAL/D, special ed. The misconception-encoded distractors are precisely the diagnostic signal you've been asking general assessments to produce — and they don't.

Homeschool parents

If you're teaching one child or a small group, the homeschool mode skips the whole-class trends and focuses on individual reports — strengths, next steps, and home-friendly activities.

Currently in development — built out year level by year level.

The Foundation (Prep) release is the first stage. Year 1 through Year 6 follow it, year level by year level, as each is written, reviewed, and trialled with classroom teachers. Secondary year levels sit beyond that on the longer-term roadmap.

Joining the launch list below means you'll hear from me when each year level is ready, and have an early-access opportunity to give feedback on how the tool works in your classroom.