Newsletter May 2026
There has never been a more uncertain time in education. There has never been a more exciting time to be in education.
Blog
Featured articles
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⏱️RM Compare | NOW is in BETA
We’re pleased to announce that ⏱️RM Compare | NOW is now in BETA. It is a lightweight RM Compare experience designed for quick judgements, allowing users to capture or upload an item, compare it to a ready-made standard, and review a score in just a few steps.
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Time for Tea? Can AI spot a nice cuppa?
Just like everyone else in the UK we are getting very excited about National Tea Day which takes place on the 21st April. The day is a great opportunity to share tea brewing preferences, and the strength of the perfect 'cuppa' is always hotly debated. So we though it would be interesting to get the view of AI.
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Back to the Future: Rethinking Assessment in a World of Uncertainty
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.
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Why Is the Assessment System Trying to Build Faster Horses – and What Can Be Done About It? (Part 2 / 4)
Early steam engines were bolted onto canal boats instead of horses. Today, autonomous driving is marketed as a convenience feature in conventional cars rather than a reason to rethink how mobility works. And in assessment, AI is being pulled into precisely the same pattern: a new engine strapped onto an old chassis.
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From Disputation to Marks: How the Industrial Revolution Rewired Assessment (Part 1 / 4)
For more than 200 years, formal assessment has been organised around a deceptively simple idea: break performance into parts, assign marks, add them up, and trust the resulting number. Written exams and numerical grading feel so natural that it is hard to imagine assessment working any other way.
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Why AI Demands a New Architecture for Assessment (4 Part Series)
Generative and agentic AI are exposing the limits of assessment systems built for a more predictable, more mechanical world. In response, much of the assessment sector is treating AI as a way to mark faster, moderate more cheaply, and preserve the familiar exam–mark–grade machinery. This will not end well.
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Is RM Compare an Assessment Software Application or Infrastructure?
When people first encounter RM Compare, they usually see it as what our homepage says it is: the world‑leading Adaptive Comparative Judgement system. That description is accurate, but as customers start integrating RM Compare more deeply, a different question often emerges: is this just another application we use, or is it actually part of our assessment infrastructure?
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When AI Beats Economists – And Why That’s Good News For Assessment
Not so long ago, the idea that an AI system could out‑analyse a room full of economists would have sounded like science fiction. Yet that’s exactly what a recentFederal Reserve working paper set out to test.
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Coming Soon! ⏱️RM Compare | NOW
A lightweight RM Compare experience for quick judgements. Capture or upload an item, compare it to a ready-made standard, and review your score in just a few steps.
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Time for Tea? Can AI spot a nice cuppa?
Just like everyone else in the UK we are getting very excited about National Tea Day which takes place on the 21st April. The day is a great opportunity to share tea brewing preferences, and the strength of the perfect 'cuppa' is always hotly debated. So we though it would be interesting to get the view of AI.
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A trip to the dentist
This morning I went for a routine dental check‑up. What struck me was how naturally my dentist fell into a comparative frame. He wasn’t mentally ticking boxes on a rubric. He was looking at two artefacts and asking, “Which represents a healthier, more stable situation?”
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A Famous Exam Story With a Hidden Assessment Problem
The story of the Barometer Question is usually told as a joke at the expense of an inflexible examiner. But if you look at it through an assessment lens, it is really a story about design failure, construct clarity, and the importance of a strong holistic statement of quality.