Using Qlive
What a diagnostic assessment tells you about your child
A diagnostic assessment shows where your child's understanding is secure and where it breaks. Here is how adaptive diagnostics work and how to read the report.
By the Qlive team. . 5 min read.
When a child is struggling in a subject, most families respond by getting help with the current chapter. That helps for a week or two, but if the trouble comes from an older skill that never settled, the same problem returns with the next chapter. A diagnostic assessment is a way to look underneath. Instead of asking “how much does my child know about this chapter?”, it asks “where exactly does my child’s understanding stop?” This guide explains how these assessments work, what a good report shows, and what to do with it.
Diagnostic, formative and summative: what is the difference?
Teachers use three broad kinds of assessment, and it helps to know which is which.
| Type | When it happens | What it answers | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diagnostic | Before teaching starts | Where should we begin? | A placement test, a skills check |
| Formative | During teaching | Is it working? What needs another go? | Worksheets, quick quizzes, class questions |
| Summative | At the end | How much was learnt? | Term exams, board exams |
Most of what children experience at school is summative: a test at the end of a unit, with a mark. A diagnostic assessment is different in purpose. It does not need to cover a fixed syllabus, and the score matters less than the pattern.
How adaptive assessments work
A fixed test gives every child the same questions. That is fair for ranking, but wasteful for diagnosis. A strong student breezes through questions that tell you nothing new, and a struggling student faces page after page of questions they cannot start.
An adaptive assessment changes as it goes:
- When your child answers correctly, the next question gets harder or moves to a new topic.
- When your child gets something wrong, the next question steps back to check the skill underneath.
- Over time, it narrows down to the level where your child is secure and the level where they are not.
Think of it like an eye test. The optician does not show you every line. They move up and down until they find the smallest line you can read clearly. An adaptive assessment does the same with skills.
Why it can go below your child’s grade
Parents are sometimes surprised to see questions from two or three grades below their child’s current class. This is deliberate. If a Grade 7 student is stuck on equations, the assessment may check integers, then fractions, then multiplication facts, to find the point where things become solid again. That point is where teaching should begin.
Why it can go above your child’s grade
The same logic works the other way. A child who is comfortable at grade level may be given harder questions to see how far they can stretch. This helps a teacher plan for a student who is bored, not only one who is behind.
What a good report should show you
A useful diagnostic report goes beyond a single mark. Look for:
- Strengths: topics your child handles confidently. These are useful to build on and good for confidence.
- Working on: topics that are partly there. Your child gets some right, makes some errors. These usually respond quickly to practice.
- Gaps: specific skills that are missing. These need teaching, not just practice.
- Patterns in errors: for example, “understands the method but makes calculation slips” is very different from “does not understand what the question is asking”.
- A suggested starting point: where teaching should begin and what to focus on first.
If a report only gives a percentage or a grade level, ask for more detail. A number alone does not tell anyone what to teach on Monday.
How to prepare your child
The best preparation is very little preparation.
- Do not revise for it. You want to see your child’s normal level, not their best day after cramming.
- Explain what it is. Something like: “This is not a test. It helps the teacher know what to teach you. Some questions will be too hard, and that is fine.”
- Choose a calm time. Not straight after school, not when they are hungry, not before a big exam.
- Set up a quiet space. A table, a pencil and rough paper, a charged device, and headphones if it is online. Our guide on preparing your child for online classes has a full checklist.
- Stay nearby but do not help. It is hard to watch your child get stuck, but helping hides the very thing the assessment is looking for.
What to do with the results
Read the report with your child
Start with the strengths. Then talk about the gaps as things to learn next, not things they failed. Children often feel relieved to hear that their difficulty has a specific name and a fix.
Share it with the school
A clear list of gaps is useful to a class teacher. They may be able to give targeted worksheets or a little extra attention.
Plan around the gaps
Whether you teach at home, use a tutor or both, the report tells you where to spend time. Our guide on how to spot learning gaps in maths has a sample weekly split between gap work and school work.
Check again later
A diagnostic is a snapshot. After a few months of focused work, a fresh check shows what has moved and what still needs attention.
Questions to ask any provider about their assessment
If a tutoring service offers an assessment, it is fair to ask:
- Is it the same test for every child, or does it adapt?
- Will it check skills below my child’s current grade?
- Who guides it, and can my child ask questions about instructions?
- What will the report show, beyond a score?
- How will the results be used to choose a teacher or plan?
- Is there any cost or commitment attached?
The Qlive free assessment
At Qlive, every student starts with a free personalised assessment, built on our Qlive Pulse diagnostic. It is adaptive and has about 40 questions, pitched at your child’s real level, and it is guided live by a Qlive counsellor so your child is not left alone with a screen.
It moves in stages: a warm-up to settle in, a topic scan across the subject, deeper rounds on the areas where your child struggled, and a challenge round to see how far they can stretch. Afterwards you get a report showing what your child is strong at, what they are working on, and the specific gaps.
We use the report to recommend the right teacher and plan. It is free and there is no obligation, so it is a reasonable first step even if you are only trying to understand where your child stands. You can see how the rest of the process works on our how it works page.