Every curriculum. One mountain.Alpenrise · Night ascent

Don’t wait for the school report.

On the school report, maths gets one line, twice a year. Alpenrise is a mountain your child climbs in the browser: ten questions a night, four strands measured apart, and a Sunday page that tells you where they stand and the one thing worth doing next.

For the climberStart climbing ↗Free. No sign-up, no account for your child. For the parentTwo minutes, start here ↓Why this exists, and what you get on Sunday.

The Alpenrise mountain at night: a paper-cut base camp with a red hut and a yellow hut, a climber in a blue coat, pine trees and signposts, a snowy peak with a beacon on top, and the aurora over the ridge. — **The mountain, tonight.** Four ridges for maths, science, English and humanities; sixteen camps; eight lanterns on every trail. Walk up to a camp, answer three questions, light a lantern. A miss costs nothing.

Why — The school report

One line, twice a year.

Before the mountain, the problem it is for. Every quotation below carries its source.

Progress report · Term 2Mia · Year 9

EnglishWorking at expectations

MathematicsWorking towards expectations

ScienceWorking at expectations

Teacher’s comment: Mia has worked hard this term.

One line · half a year

Maths gets one line

On the school report, maths gets one line, and that line has to cover half a year. Nearly two hundred school days a year; two reports.

Twice a year · written into the rules

Twice is the rule, not an accident

“…given at least twice in any program year.”
Australia · Schools Assistance (Learning Together) Act 2004, s 15

“Reporting to parents in plain language in writing must be at least twice a year.”
New Zealand · Ministry of Education, National Administration Guideline 2A

New Zealand scrapped its National Standards in 2017. The two reports a year stayed.

The level hides the gap

A grade is an average

“…a pupil could have serious gaps in their knowledge and understanding, but still be placed within the level. This meant it wasn’t always clear exactly which areas of the curriculum the child was secure in and where the gaps were.”
England · Final report of the Commission on Assessment without Levels, 2015, p. 5

Maths isn’t one thing

Secure in number, stuck in geometry

Numbersecure

Algebra?

Geometrystuck

Statistics?

One line averages that away. Alpenrise measures the four strands apart, so the stuck one has a name.

Not the teacher’s fault

The closest eyes

One report has to be fair to every child in the class. Only a parent can look this closely — given the right instrument. That is what the Sunday page below is for.

Sunday · Mia · Year 9Where the marks went · Pro

Number fact

Working

Checking

Concept

One thing this weekTwo minutes on carrying before the climb — the working slips are all there. Leave geometry alone; it is fine.

The same page, without Pro11 misses this week, 5 of them the same kind of slip. Which kind, and the one thing that follows from it, is the Pro part.

Every Sunday — The page

One page a week

Each linked child gets a Sunday page. It is short on purpose: one thing worth doing next. Ten would mean none.

Where each strand sits. Number, algebra, geometry, statistics and the rest, each on its own rung, read back in your school’s words. A strong strand never hides a weak one in an average.
Which way it is moving. The accuracy trend, session by session, so a bad night reads as a bad night and a slide reads as a slide.
Where the marks went. With Pro, every miss is sorted — a number-fact slip, a working slip, a checking slip, or a concept that never landed — because each one needs a different fix.

The same page can come by email every Sunday, and on the first of each month a longer Mountain Report sums up the month before.

Start the placement together↗Sign in with your email first, and we take you both straight to the placement. Their answers are kept with your account from the first question.

Step 1 — Twenty minutes

Sit the placement together

Pick one subject. About 24 adaptive questions: the ladder climbs when your child is right, and a question they are unsure of can be skipped rather than guessed. You get a rung for the subject and one for each strand.

Step 2 — One code

Link their mountain

Your child taps Parent at the top of the mountain and gets a six-digit code; you type it on your account page. Their progress then follows them to any device, and your child still never signs in.

Step 3 — Every night

Ten questions, then Sunday

Ten questions a night close to their rung, a few minutes. Anything missed comes back at 2, 7 and 21 nights. On Sunday the week lands on one page.

Free, and Pro

Free, for everyoneFree

The whole mountain to walk, and the placement in every subject
One climb a night in one subject: ten questions, and the night patrol that brings misses back at 2, 7 and 21 nights
The parent account, the Sunday page and the Mountain Report

No account is needed to climb, and nothing moves from the free side to the paid side later.

See why, not just whether.Pro · every child

Where the marks went. Every miss sorted into four kinds — number facts, working, checking, the concept — and followed week by week, with the accuracy trend. Free tells you which rung your child is on; Pro tells you why it is not moving up.
Every subject, every night. Free is one climb a night in one subject. Pro opens all four, with extra rounds, so the strand that needs it gets its turn.
Exam season. A route for the exam itself — Cambridge IGCSE Maths 0580, Core or Extended, or IB Maths AA SL: topic sets and full mock papers, marked once. Plus practice sets, trap hunts, sprints and the kit, drawn from the whole question bank. Set the exam date in the account and the last four weeks of Sunday pages turn into sprint pages.

One plan covers every child linked to a parent’s account. Each child gets fourteen nights of Pro once, free, with no card.

Pro is US$9.99 a month, US$49 a year, or once for the whole family. All plans and prices →

Not ready to link a child?

Start with the Sunday email

Open a parent account with just your email and switch on the Sunday email. Until a child is linked, it is the general edition: one phrase from a school report a week, decoded — what “working towards expectations” actually says, how a stanine is read, what a strand is. The blog has the longer versions.

Open a parent account →

Rope-team codes

Pass it on

Good instruments are worth handing on. A family you invite with your rope-team code starts with 21 nights of Pro instead of 14, and when they finish a placement you earn Pro time. How that works.

What this is not

Not a report card

It is not a grade for your child, and not a prediction of their school results. It is a reading of how they answered here, on a ladder that reads in 40 school systems’ words. We never tell you a child is behind; we tell you which strand to look at next.

Questions parents ask

Base camp — FAQ

Does my child need an account?: No, and they never will. The mountain works without signing in, and its progress is saved under a random id, with no name and no email. To carry on from another computer, your child can save a climber code in the Pack (three words and a PIN they choose), or you can link the mountain to your parent account; either way, the two devices stay in sync. Parent accounts are for adults and hold your email and no other personal details.
Which school systems?: Forty countries plus Cambridge and IB. A rung reads back in your school’s own words — Year 10, Grade 9, 3^e, Klasse 9. Country not listed? It reads as an age instead.
Which subjects?: Maths, science, English and humanities: four ridges, sixteen strands, each measured on its own, from the first year of secondary school to the top of school.
Does it help with IGCSE or IB maths?: Two ways. Every rung already reads in Cambridge and IB terms, and Pro adds exam routes for Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics 0580 (Core and Extended) and IB Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches SL: topic sets and full mock papers in each syllabus’s own shape, marked once. Every question is original — none is copied from a past paper, and no exam board has reviewed or endorsed them.
What does it cost?: The mountain, the placement, one climb a night, the parent account and the Sunday page are free, for good. Pro adds where the marks went, every subject every night, and exam season — from US$9.99 a month, with fourteen nights free per child and no card. All plans.
Is it private?: No ads, no tracking, nothing loaded from anyone else’s servers. Payment happens on Stripe’s own page; we never see a card. The privacy policy is written to be read.
How long does the placement take?: About twenty minutes for one subject: around 24 adaptive questions, and a question your child is unsure of can be skipped rather than guessed.
What happens when the trial ends?: You drop back to the free side: the mountain, the placement and one climb a night carry on, every lit lantern stays lit, and nothing is charged — there was never a card. What pauses is Pro, the exam routes with it, until a parent picks a plan.

Summit

A school report is a snapshot. Alpenrise is daylight — start climbing tonight, free.

Parents: sit the placement together, and your child’s answers are kept with your account from the first question. Parent accounts are for adults and hold your email and nothing else.