Five verified free tools Canadian teachers can put to work this week, plus two commonly cited tools that turned out not to be a fit
Canadian teachers have more free, curriculum-aligned assessment tools on hand than most realize. They just live across a handful of different sites instead of one. Here is what each one is actually good for, and how to put it to work this week.
A quick diagnostic at the start of a unit, a formative check partway through, a way to see which students are actually stuck versus which just need more time: these are things every teacher needs and none of them require a budget. Between a provincial teacher federation’s assessment site, a free national math resource built by a university, and a federal skills program for older students, most classroom needs are covered without spending a cent. Pick the one or two that match your grade and province and you have a usable diagnostic bank by the end of this article.
What Free Software Is Aligned with the Curriculum in Canada for Assessments?
There is no single national tool, since curriculum and assessment are set provincially. The strongest free options are the Members Sharing in Assessment for Ontario elementary teachers, the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s formative assessment tool list, the University of Waterloo’s CEMC math resources, and the Government of Canada’s Skills for Success tools for older students. Each covers a different slice of the curriculum map, so most teachers end up combining two or three.
Members Sharing in Assessment
The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (“ETFO”) runs a free site for members, organized by division: Primary (Kindergarten to Grade 3), Junior (Grades 4 to 6), Intermediate (Grades 7 to 8), and a French stream. Each division has formative and diagnostic tasks, checklists, and guidance on choosing the right tool for a given purpose. It is built specifically around the Ontario elementary curriculum and the Assessment for Learning cycle, and it is available to ETFO members.
Alberta Teachers’ Association: Free Formative Assessment Tools
The Alberta Teachers’ Association maintains a list of platforms that offer free, general-purpose formative assessment that are suitable to be used in any province. The list includes ClassFlow, Formative, Sli.do, GoClass, Flipgrid, Socrative, and Quizalize for Grades 3 to 12. It also lists ASSISTments, a nonprofit math platform that gives students immediate feedback and gives teachers real data on where a class is struggling.
CEMC: Free Math Resources from the University of Waterloo
The Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing at the University of Waterloo offers free math materials for grades 3 to 12, with no registration required. Problem of the Week, past contest questions with solutions, a problem set generator, and full courseware for Grades 4 to 12 give teachers anywhere in Canada a ready-to-use diagnostic or enrichment bank. These tools are particularly useful for spotting where a student’s math reasoning breaks down rather than just whether an answer is right.
Ontario Educational Resource Bank
The Ontario Educational Resource Bank holds more than 20,000 resources for Kindergarten to Grade 12, created by teachers for teachers and aligned to the Ontario curriculum, hosted through eLearning Ontario. It is free, but access is restricted to teachers and students in Ontario’s publicly funded school boards, so it is not available to a private tutor or a teacher outside Ontario’s public system.
Skills for Success (Government of Canada)
Skills for Success is a federal program built around nine foundational and transferable skills: reading, writing, numeracy, digital skills, problem solving, communication, creativity and innovation, collaboration, and adaptability, with free online assessment tools. It is aimed more at older students and adults preparing for the workforce than at younger classroom diagnostic work, so it fits best with Grade 9 to 12 students, adult learners, and career-readiness programming rather than as a general K to 8 tool.
Practical Note on Fit: Provincial and Access Limits
Two of these resources, the Ontario Educational Resource Bank and ETFO’s tools, are built for Ontario’s public system specifically, and the free TVOMathify tool for Grades 4 to 12 requires an Ontario Education Number. A teacher or tutor working outside Ontario, or outside the publicly funded system, will get more direct use out of CEMC, the Alberta Teachers’ Association’s list, and Skills for Success, since none of those three require provincial enrolment to access.
Where WASSAIL and Lyryx Learning Fit
Both names come up in general searches for Canadian assessment tools, but neither is a classroom fit. WASSAIL is an open-source platform built at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Faculty to help academic libraries measure the impact of information literacy instruction. It is a university library tool, not a K to 12 classroom one. Lyryx Learning was a Calgary-based publisher of undergraduate math, statistics, and business open educational resources with paired online assessment, but it was acquired by Harris Computer Systems in August 2024 and now operates under a different structure, so it is no longer a standalone free K to 12 resource to point teachers toward.
A Free Tool Can Identify a Gap but Cannot Address It
These assessment tools can show where a student is struggling. What they are not built to do is adjust in real time, changing the way a concept is explained until it clicks for one specific student. That is why one-on-one tutoring works where a free diagnostic leaves off. A checklist or a platform can flag that a student is stuck on fractions or sentence structure, but closing that specific gap requires responsive teaching by a qualified teacher.
Tutoring with Connect Education
Connect Education works exclusively with licensed teachers. Certified teachers are matched with families across Canada for one-on-one support online or in person. Connect Education’s certified teachers build regular assessments into their tutoring program, which allows them to continually track progress and adapt lessons to students’ needs.