Online Math Practice by Grade Band

Maths on My Path is banded 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, and 11–12. Those are school-year bands, two years at a time, not a slider and not a CEFR ladder. Language tests on the same hub call the axis Level. Maths calls it Grade. The names matter because the rule is the same in both products: one band per sitting.

You can tick more than one grade on the practice card. That does not mix them. At start, the card rolls one of the bands you left on. The session will not build a pool that spans a nine-year-old and a school-leaver. If you try to start without a grade, the API refuses with grade_required. Why grade bands matter in practice is the design note. This article is how the bands behave on the card, what the defaults are, and how language interacts with which grades exist.

The five bands, in order

3–4. Early school maths, including the first Kangaroo levels. Items can still be puzzles. "Easy" here is not easy at 11–12.

5–6. A middle-primary / early-secondary band in many systems. On the card this is one of the three default ticks.

7–8. The centre of the default set. Deep enough that 20 medium questions are usually deliverable. In some languages this is the only band that has items at all.

9–10. The other default tick. Secondary maths: more algebra, more geometry that needs a figure, more items that look like contest 4- and 5-point tasks when they come from Kangaroo.

11–12. The upper end. Off by default. One click to add. Do not put a 5–6 learner here because the sitting "looks advanced."

Kangaroo paper sizes differ by band — 24 tasks at 3–4, 24 or 30 at 5–6 depending on year, 30 from 7–8 up — but that is the Kangaroo card reconstructing a paper. Math Kangaroo grade levels covers that. General Math uses the same five bands as a query over the whole subject, not as a paper size.

Why one band per sitting

Complexity in this bank is not an age. For Kangaroo-shaped items it is the task-number third of the paper: first third 3 points, middle 4, last 5. Those thirds exist in every grade. A mixed-grade pool with "easy" ticked would still mix a 3–4 warm-up with an 11–12 warm-up. The score would be a number. It would not be a measurement.

School maths has the same problem even without Kangaroo. Fractions at 3–4 and fractions at 9–10 share a topic name. They do not share a difficulty that a single sitting can average.

So: one sitting, one band. Several ticks mean "I am willing to land in any of these." The roll picks one. Your review, your retry-wrong pile, and your mastery bar for that session belong to that band.

If you want two bands in one week, sit two sittings. Do not ask the card to blend them. The topic filter does not override this. Algebra at two grades is two sittings.

What the card opens on

The card does not open on all five bands. A span from 3–4 to 11–12 has no useful "all grades" sitting, and most learners are not at the ends. The default is the middle three: 5–6, 7–8, 9–10. Grade 3–4 and 11–12 stay one click away. They are not hidden. They are not in the opening pool.

Complexity defaults to Medium only. Easy and hard start off. A mixed-difficulty first sitting is unreadable: you cannot tell band error from topic error from a hard tail. Size defaults to 20. The offered sizes are 10, 20, and 60. The card will not offer a length it cannot fill for whichever of your candidate bands is thinnest. If 60 cannot be guaranteed, 60 is disabled, not silently shortened after you start.

Topics default to all topics available in the candidate grades. You narrow by unticking. Language, when the bank has more than one, defaults to the interface language if that language exists, otherwise English.

The card is startable on render. There is no Random. You see the ticks. Untick until the sitting matches the learner, then start.

Language control: English, and Polish in the bank

Maths items can exist in more than one language. The practice card, when more than one language is available, shows a language control. It is a dropdown on one line. It is not a second subject. It constrains which grades have a pool.

English spans all five bands. That is the language to use for ordinary online math practice for students on this platform unless you have a specific reason not to.

Polish items exist in the bank because they were authored for a retired Polish school exam. They are not a live exam product. We do not offer Egzamin Ósmoklasisty, or any other named school-leaving paper, as something you can sit. If Polish is selectable at all, expect the grade list to shrink. Polish content in this bank is a grade 7–8 story, not a five-band story. The picker follows the cells that exist. You cannot pick Polish and then 3–4 if that cell is empty. The card will not invent items to keep the five bands on screen.

Do not start a sitting in Polish thinking you are practising that retired exam as an exam. You would be drawing from leftover items in a language filter, at the band those items occupy. For almost every learner using My Path in English, leave the language on English and pick the grade the student is actually in.

If the interface is in another language but the maths bank is English, the card should still prefer a language that has items. Empty cells are not filled by translation on the fly. There is no auto-translate of a figure-heavy stem.

Default middle bands, in practice

A parent who opens the card and hits Start without reading will get a sitting in 5–6, 7–8, or 9–10, medium, 20 questions, all topics. That is a defensible default for "I have a secondary-age child and I have not thought about this yet." It is a bad default for a year-4 child and a bad default for a year-12 child.

Untick. Leave one band. If you leave two, you are accepting a roll. If you leave the default three, you are accepting a roll across a wide age range. That is legal. It is rarely what you meant.

For Kangaroo, match the contest level to the band. For General Math, match the school year as well as you can to 3–4 through 11–12. Systems that use year 7, grade 8, or "third class" need a translation into our five buckets. When unsure, sit the lower band first. A clean 20 at 7–8 tells you more than a wrecked 20 at 9–10.

How bands interact with length and topic

A 60-question sitting has to be deliverable in the band that gets rolled. Thin bands, or a thin topic inside a band, disable 60. That is the card protecting you from a start that cannot finish honestly. Switch to 20, widen topic, or pick a deeper band — do not mix bands to "make 60 possible." Making 60 possible by blending 3–4 into 11–12 is exactly the sitting the rule forbids.

Mixed Problems, algebra, geometry, statistics, number, and fractions each have different depth by band. A topic that is rich at 7–8 can be thin at 3–4. The picker only lists topics that exist for the candidate grades. If you tick 3–4 only and a topic disappears, it was not available there. That is information, not a broken filter.

Review belongs to the band you sat

After the sitting: score, correct, wrong, skipped, retry wrong, retry flagged, full retake. Mastery on the hub is per topic, with complexity 1–5. It is still downstream of grade. Do not read an algebra bar as if it were independent of band. If you hop bands, you are mixing evidence.

Retry wrong should stay in the same band as the original sitting. A full retake is the same query. If the query was "roll one of 5–6 / 7–8 / 9–10," a retake can land in a different one of those three. If you need a stable comparison, tick one band before you care about week-on-week scores.

Mapping a school year onto five buckets

National systems do not share a numbering scheme. "Year 7" in one country is not "grade 7" in another, and "third class" can mean age 8 or age 14 depending on who is talking. My Path will not auto-detect the student's school year from a profile. You pick the band.

A practical map: if the student is still in early primary arithmetic and simple puzzles, start 3–4. If they are in the years where fractions and early algebra appear together, 5–6 or 7–8. If they are in mid-secondary with formal algebra and geometry proofs-in-all-but-name, 9–10. If they are in the last years of school maths, 11–12. When two buckets both seem plausible, sit the lower one first. The default middle three exist because that is where most learners on a general practice card actually are — not because the ends are lesser maths.

Timer and feedback do not change the band. Exam-mode at 3–4 is still 3–4. Immediate feedback at 11–12 is still 11–12. Use those controls for teaching style, not as a substitute for picking the right row.

The last remaining grade tick cannot be turned off. An empty Grade row would have to mean "nothing" or "everything," and neither is a sitting we will start. If you want a different band, add it first, then remove the one you do not want. Same rule on complexity and topic.

Switching language after you picked grades

Language is chosen first in effect even when it sits on one line: it constrains which grades exist. Switch from English to a language that only has 7–8 and the 5–6 and 9–10 ticks disappear because those cells are empty. Switch back and the five-band English layout returns. Do not treat that as the card "resetting your work." It is showing you the bank.

This is also why you should not hunt for a Polish eighth-grade exam product on the Exams shelf. Polish items in the maths bank, when present, are leftover content from a retired exam. They occupy the band they were written for. They are not a live qualification, and we do not sell them as one.

English is the language that covers 3–4 through 11–12. For students practising maths in an English interface, leave it there unless you are deliberately reading items in another language the bank actually holds.

Who this is for, and who pays

Students, parents, Kangaroo prep, general fluency — anyone who needs the subject at an age-shaped difficulty. Education is Student (€9.99/month, 250 tokens, no trial, unlimited Education) or Monthly (€19.99, 2000 tokens, 7-day €1.99 trial, unlimited Education). For Me and Around Me include none. GBP mirrors EUR; PLN is zł24.99 / 49.99 / 99.99. Get Student — €9.99/month — on /premium. Signup grace does not open Education. The Student plan article is the comparison with Around Me: same price, different product, not a ladder.

Personality tests do not have grade bands. Do not look for 7–8 on a Big Five result.

What not to expect from a band

A band is not a promise of national-curriculum coverage. It is not SAT, GCSE, Abitur, or a live Polish eighth-grade exam. Those are not on the Exams shelf. General Math and Kangaroo use 3–4 through 11–12 because that is how this bank is labelled, including Kangaroo levels.

We are not affiliated with official Math Kangaroo / Kangourou sans Frontières. Practising a band here is not entering the contest.

We will not tell you that sitting 11–12 will get someone into university. We will tell you that sitting 11–12 when the learner is in 7–8 will produce a grim score that does not diagnose the 7–8 gaps.

Pick one band, then start

Open /education. On General Math or Kangaroo, look at the Grade row. Leave the middle three only if you mean them. Otherwise tick the band that matches the learner. Keep language on English unless you have a real reason to use another language the bank actually holds — and do not treat Polish leftover items as a live named exam.

Need the entitlement? /premium. Need the subject without an exam-family pin? General Math. Need puzzles that will not sit on a keyword? Mixed Problems and word problems. Education on My Path is the wider map.

One band per sitting. The ends are one click. The middle is the default, not a destiny.