Free Daily Maths Starters & Warm Ups (Years 7 to 11)
The Nightly Twenty is a free daily maths starter for Years 7 to 11. Twenty questions
appear at once, the clock runs for five minutes, and the paper marks itself the moment
you finish. Every question is non-calculator, built to be answered in your head or on
paper. A new set arrives every morning, so it works as a form-time routine, a lesson
starter or five minutes of homework. There is nothing to print, nothing to mark and
no account needed — open the page and start.
A new set of 20 questions every morning
The questions change overnight, so there is a fresh paper waiting whenever your first lesson starts. Everyone in the same year group gets the same twenty questions on the same day, which means a class can sit it together, compare scores and talk about the ones they found hard — and nobody can refresh the page for an easier set. The questions are generated fresh each day from a bank of seventy-eight question types, so pupils meet the same skills in different clothes rather than memorising a worksheet. That spacing and variety is the point: the aim is a skill you can still do in March, not one you could do on the afternoon you were taught it. Scores build into an observation log. A pupil who comes back every day builds a run, and the log shows the last twenty-eight nights at a glance, so a broken streak is visible and a good month is obvious.
Built for Years 7 to 11
Pupils pick their year group, and the questions are pitched to it. The structure of the paper stays the same all the way up — what changes is what counts as a fair question.
KS3 Maths Starters (Years 7 & 8)
Mental strategies with two-digit and three-digit numbers, times tables to twelve, negative numbers, place value, factors and primes. Key skills cover fractions of amounts, simplifying fractions, percentages, ratio, rounding, substitution, solving one-step and two-step equations, area and perimeter, averages, unit conversion, probability and angle rules. It is the KS3 number curriculum, drilled to fluency.
Year 9 maths starter
The step up towards GCSE. Alongside the KS3 core, Year 9 papers bring in percentage change, simple interest, three-part ratio, ratio as a fraction, factorising, area of a trapezium, circles, Pythagoras, speed, estimation by rounding to one significant figure and writing numbers as a product of prime factors.
GCSE Maths Starters (Years 10 & 11)
Standard form, index laws, reverse percentages, compound interest, expanding double brackets, finding the nth term, gradients and intercepts, and — at Year 11 — negative and fractional indices, surds and upper and lower bounds. Mental strategies get harder too: multiplying and dividing by decimals, which is a reliably weak spot at GCSE. Every Year 10 and 11 paper is guaranteed to contain a set number of upper-tier questions, so it never quietly becomes a Year 7 paper with bigger numbers.
Every question is non-calculator
This is a deliberate constraint, not an accident of what got written. Percentages resolve to whole numbers. Circle questions ask for the answer in terms of π rather than a decimal. Compound interest runs for two years at ten or twenty per cent, so it is a multiplication you can do on paper. No question anywhere demands an awkward division. The point is that a pupil can do the whole paper with a pencil, and the skill they practise is the one they will need in a non-calculator exam. Answers can be typed in the form that suits them — fractions as 3/4, ratios as 3:5, powers as 2^5, standard form as 3.4x10^5 — and equivalent forms are accepted, so 6/8 marks the same as 3/4.
What the five minutes covers
Each paper is three sections of a fixed shape, so pupils know what is coming.
Mental strategies — eight questions
Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, negative numbers, doubling and halving, place value, order of operations, decimals, money, number bonds, sequences and time intervals. At Years 9 to 11 this section also includes mental decimal multiplication and division.
Number facts — six questions
Times tables, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, factors, primes, multiples, highest common factor and lowest common multiple, prime factorisation and index laws. At Year 11, reciprocals, negative indices, fractional indices and surds.
Key skills — six questions
Fractions, decimals and percentages, fractions of amounts, ratio and proportion, rounding to decimal places and significant figures, substitution, solving equations, expanding and factorising, area and perimeter, volume, circles, Pythagoras, averages, unit conversion, currency, speed, probability and angles.
How to run it as a form-time or lesson starter
The simplest way is on the board at the start of the lesson: everyone in the class is sitting the same paper, so you can run the five minutes together and mark it together. Because the results screen breaks the score down by topic, you get an immediate read on what the class as a whole found hard, which is often more useful than the score itself. It also prints. If you would rather work on paper, or you are running it in a room without devices, print the paper and mark from the answers afterwards. For homework, a pupil doing five minutes a night builds a streak, and the streak is the thing that keeps them coming back. Wrong answers show the correct answer with a one-line method, so a pupil working alone at home is not left stuck.
Free for schools — no logins, no printing, no cost
The Nightly Twenty is free. Not a trial, not a freemium tier, not free for the first five weeks. There is no licence, no per-pupil charge and nothing to order. It also works with no account at all — a pupil can open the page and start, and their log is kept in their browser. Creating a free eClassroom account is optional, and the only thing it changes is that their streak, their rank and their scores follow them between devices, so the tablet at school and the phone at home add up to one run instead of two. If you already use a paid numeracy programme, this sits alongside it perfectly well. If you are looking for something that does the job without a budget conversation, this is built for that.
Frequently asked questions
Is the daily maths starter really free? Yes, completely. There is no trial period, no licence and no per-pupil cost, for pupils, teachers or schools. Do pupils need to log in? No. It works with no account at all. A free eClassroom account is optional and only means a pupil's streak and rank follow them between devices. Can I use it with a whole class? Yes. Everyone in the same year group gets the same twenty questions each day, so a class can sit it together and compare scores. The paper also prints if you would rather work on paper. Is a calculator needed? No. Every question is written to be answered mentally or on paper. Percentages resolve to whole numbers, circle answers are given in terms of π, and no question requires an awkward division. Which year groups is it for? Years 7 to 11. The pupil chooses their year group and the questions are pitched to it, from KS3 number work up to GCSE standard form, index laws and bounds. How long does the daily maths starter take? Five minutes. Twenty questions appear at once and the clock runs for five minutes, after which the paper marks itself and shows worked answers with a breakdown by topic.