The landscape of education is changing. Across England, the Curriculum and Assessment Review signals the most significant renewal in decades—and with it, a powerful three-year window to rethink, rebuild, and reimagine how we understand student accomplishment. Read our 10 part blog series.
Another bumper edition featuring product updates, research reports and a number of opinion pieces. The pace of change in assessment is exponential, driven by the impact of AI. Keeping up can be difficult. We prioritise speed of learning in everything we do to help you to get the very latest perspectives. We are learning faster than ever and will continue to share as we progress. We build RM Compare to facilitate fast learning, and also support research partners around the world to drive things forward. There has never been a more exciting (or important) time for assessment.
What can a dating app teach us about assessment? Quite a lot, as it turns out. The dramatic difference in decision time across platforms, highlighted in the chart below, is at the heart of RM Compare’s mobile-first transformation. It’s also a bridge—built by research—that connects traditional marking assumptions to the new realities of digital assessment.
A recent study (2025) from Jeffrey Buckley (Technological University of the Shannon) and Caiwei Zhu (Delft University of Technology) set out to answer a critical question for anyone seeking fairness and efficiency in educational assessment: How feasible is Adaptive Comparative Judgement (ACJ) when deployed in real classrooms?
True educational transformation is only possible when every learner, teacher, and leader is supported by assessment systems that are accessible, fair, and adaptable to all needs. Traditional approaches too often leave out those who learn, communicate, or create in different ways. The future must be truly inclusive, meeting people where they are and how they learn.
Reliability, security, and adaptability are non-negotiable in today’s assessment environment. Schools, MATs, and local authorities require systems they can trust - platforms that work every time, at any scale, under any conditions.
Today's curriculum goes beyond academic knowledge. Schools are now required to nurture key life skills through enrichment activities spanning civic engagement, arts and culture, nature, sport, and practical life skills. These experiences are not just add-ons; they are vital for building resilience, confidence, leadership, and wellbeing in every learner.
Too often, creative ability is overlooked by traditional assessment systems focused narrowly on written exams and core subjects. But the curriculum reforms signal a new era: arts GCSEs now enjoy equal status, EBacc constraints have been lifted, and creative subjects are front and centre in every school’s offer.
Assessment should do more than just sort students, it should spark real improvement. For too long, schools have been judged by numbers on a page: grades, pass rates, and performance tables. But the curriculum reforms set an ambitious new challenge: assessment must drive positive change for every learner, not just record where they stand.
Every learner deserves assessment that is fair, reliable, and meaningful no matter their background, abilities, or learning pathway. For too long, high-stakes exams and inconsistent moderation have led to systemic bias and bottlenecks in scaling assessment for tens of thousands of schools.
For decades, the assessment system has often overlooked teachers’ expertise, relying on standardised scores that can undervalue professional judgement and reduce classroom autonomy. The new curriculum reforms present a transformational opportunity to put teachers at the heart of assessment, restoring trust in their insights, experience, and professional knowledge.
Educational reforms are reshaping how we view success. Instead of a narrow focus on high-stakes exams and academic attainment, the new curriculum puts value on every young person’s strengths, talents, and achievements whether academic, creative, vocational, or through enrichment.
Education is more than exams and league tables. For too long, the system has privileged what’s easy to quantify—core subjects, test results, and narrow definitions of success, while arts, enrichment, creative subjects, oracy, and broader life skills have been pushed aside.