Diagnostic and Formative Assessment

Effective teaching begins with what each student already understands.
Instructive gives you a live, complete map of every student’s knowledge — fast, fair, and immediately useful.

“Identifying students’ prior knowledge is key to their progression through the Mathematics curriculum. (Instructive) provides an abundance of data to identify student need.”
– Clay Urquhart, Head Teacher of Mathematics

The Map:
Your Teaching Compass

The heart of Instructive is the map: a live, curriculum-aligned record of what each student knows and doesn’t know yet.

At a glance, you can see which mathematical concepts are well-understood, which are missing, and which haven’t been checked. You can zoom out for whole-class patterns or zoom in on a single student’s gaps.

This isn’t just useful data; it’s the foundation. Every personalised exercise, targeted intervention, and unit plan begins here.

“Without (Instructive), it was really difficult knowing where the students were at. Now we know…Here’s the curriculum grid, this is what he knows and doesn’t know – that’s huge!”
– Brendan Allen, Assistant Head of Primary Years, Learning & Teaching

Building the Map:
The Initial Diagnostic

The first version of the map is created through a 40-minute adaptive diagnostic, taken when students log in for the first time. This diagnostic is not a high-stakes test. It’s a careful, low-pressure process that produces data you can use immediately.

The diagnostic is:

Easy to Run

One item at a time, option to skip, pen-and-paper working allowed, no calculator. Four 10-minute sections with breaks. No marking needed.

Efficiently Adaptive

Uses connections within maths to infer mastery and gaps. For instance, multi-digit addition mastery safely implies single-digit.

Careful and Fair

Multiple questions work in combination. Single mistakes don’t count; the system looks for consistent clusters of errors before identifying a gap.

Why other tests don’t give you the map?

Most big assessments report a percentile or a scaled score. Although there is some insight into specific sub-topics, this is typically limited and incomplete. Such test design treats mathematics as a unidimensional trait, aiming to place students on a common scale. The statistics behind it can look impressive, but the output doesn’t show every granular skill a student knows, and where each gap lies. In reality, two students with the same overall ‘level’ can have vastly different strengths and gaps across different sub-topics in maths.

Instructive is different. Our diagnostic is built from the ground up to be “Criterion-Referenced.” It goes through the curriculum piece by piece, systematically, without skipping over content. The aim is not to rank students, but to build a complete map of their mathematical proficiency – including any knowledge gaps.

That’s the data teachers really need for personalised teaching: a clear guide to where each student is, and exactly what to teach next – in addition to providing each student’s overall level.

Keeping the Map Up-to-Date

The diagnostic process is not just “one and done”. Once the foundation is built, Instructive keeps the map refreshed automatically, woven seamlessly into day-to-day lessons.

Together, these checks keep the map alive — always current, always accurate, and always ready to guide teaching.

Bonus diagnostics

When needed, more diagnosis neatly replaces an exercise of the same length – steadily filling in missing pieces of the map.

pattern-instructive-effectively-adaptive

Entrance tickets

Quick checks at the start of each new module. The system recognises prior learning immediately, avoiding wasted time and updating the map.

Topic tests

End-of-unit tests tie directly back into the map, double-checking earlier evidence and confirming mastery of new content.

“The data that Maths Pathway provides is excellent and extremely helpful. The data is presented well and very easy to read. It clearly shows where each student is at and where and if they need additional help.”
– Leah Farwell, Primary Teacher

Turning Assessment
Into Action

The power of Instructive lies in the map: always current, always reliable, and always ready to guide teaching. Built from an adaptive diagnostic and kept up to date with bonus checks, entrance tickets, and topic tests, it gives teachers a complete picture of every student’s knowledge.

Because most of the marking is automatic, the workload stays low. And because the data appears instantly, it can shape tomorrow’s lesson – not next month’s.

This isn’t just assessment for reporting. It’s assessment that is 100% integrated into teaching – flowing through automatically – giving you the clarity to target gaps, build on strengths, and help every student grow.