Blog

• 27th Mar 2026

  Opinion

  Mobley vs Workday – an update on the case that is challenging AI assessment

  By Mark House

  Derek Mobley, an IT professional who turned to digital hiring platforms after being laid off from his job. Over nine months he submitted well over 100 applications through Workday‑powered portals and, despite being qualified, received no interviews or offers. When he realised that even the rejection emails were being generated by bots, he began to suspect that automated screening, not human judgement, was keeping him out.

• 23rd Mar 2026

  Product

  From pilots to products: how organisations can modernise without blowing everything up

  By Mark House

  Every exam body I talk to feels the same squeeze. Governments want innovation. Schools want recognition for richer work. Generative AI is crashing into the system from all sides. And yet, when results day comes, the only thing that really matters is whether the grades stand up in the media and in court.

• 20th Mar 2026

  AI Validation

  The Human Skill That Still Eludes AI – And Why Assessment Needs Ground Truth

  By Mark House

  AI is arriving in education as if it were a cure‑all for workload and consistency. Sales decks promise tools that “judge writing like teachers”, “skip marking altogether”, and “cut workload by 90 per cent”. It is an attractive story in a system under pressure. But if we listen carefully to the people building these systems – and to the artists responding to them – a different story emerges.

• 19th Mar 2026

  Opinion

  Back to the Future: Rethinking Assessment in a World of Uncertainty

  By Mark House

  In 1792, revolutionaries in Paris abolished a king, Americans calmly re‑elected a president, and Cambridge quietly invented something that still shapes millions of lives every year: exam marking. While politics and industry were being rebuilt in public, assessment was being rebuilt on paper. Two centuries later, we are still living inside that decision – and only now starting to see its limits.

• 19th Mar 2026

  Copyright

  A Potential Copyright Checklist for Choosing AI Assessment Tools (4/4)

  By Mark House

  Over this series, we’ve tried to do three things: explain why UK copyright policy on AI is shifting, argue that student work should be treated as creative property rather than free fuel, and sketch when – if ever – training on that work might be legitimate.

• 19th Mar 2026

  Copyright

  Training on Student Work: Saying “Yes” (and “No”) Safely (3/4)

  By Mark House

  So far in this series, we’ve argued that student work is creative property, not just “data”, and that assessment use and training use are not the same thing. That naturally leads to a harder question: is it ever acceptable to train models on student work – and if so, on what terms?

• 19th Mar 2026

  Copyright

  Who Owns Student Work When AI Is in the Loop? (2/4)

  By Mark House

  When people talk about AI in assessment, the conversation usually goes straight to marking accuracy, bias or workload. Underneath all of that sits a quieter question that is just as important: who actually owns the work being processed – and what does that ownership mean once AI is involved?

• 19th Mar 2026

  Copyright

  AI, Copyright and Student Work: Why the UK’s U‑Turn Matters (1/4)

  By Mark House

  For a while, it looked like AI developers might get a broad “free pass” to train on almost anything they could scrape. That idea has now been quietly parked. The UK government’s latest report on copyright and artificial intelligence signals a very different direction – one that matters a lot if you’re responsible for student work and assessment.

• 17th Mar 2026

  Opinion

  How reliable are GCSE grades – and what can we do about it?

  By Mark House

  Every year in England, some things in education feel almost guaranteed. Exam season will arrive on schedule, bringing with it the familiar mix of anxiety, hope and hard work in schools up and down the country. Ofqual will emphasise that our qualifications system is robustly designed, closely regulated and delivering grades that are fair and can be trusted. And Dennis Sherwood will publish fresh analysis arguing – drawing largely on Ofqual’s own technical reports – that neither the level of fairness nor the level of trust we assume is quite what it seems.

• Next