This week, Dennis Sherwood posed an uncomfortable question in a powerful SRHE blog post: when we become witnesses to systemic problems in assessment when 1.6 million out of 6.5 million GCSE and A-level grades differ from what a senior examiner would have awarded. What do we do?
Across hiring and education, AI is already deciding who gets seen, shortlisted, or passed over. Tools built on large language models can read thousands of CVs, mark essays, and sort candidates faster and cheaper than any human team. The efficiency story is compelling. The safety story is not.
Today, December 11, 2025, OpenAI launched GPT-5.2. If you've been watching the space, you might be wondering: is this it? Have we reached the point where foundation models can truly replace human judgment? The answer is still no. And understanding why is critical for anyone building assessment, hiring, or decision systems that matter.
The regulator has chosen a slow path for digital assessment. The economy can’t afford to wait. Here is why the future of skills depends on Transformation, not just Substitution.
There is a renewed focus on holistic assessment recognising the need for a broader approach that can better appreciate the whole learner. The possibilities are exciting - they are also complex.
It's not quite spring yet but change is in the air. Read more about some imminent changes to the RM Compare user experience as well as other news.
In RM Compare sessions, parameter values are numerical representations of the relative quality or difficulty of the items being judged.
In the context of comparative judgement, the term "misfit" refers to a judge or an item that consistently deviates from the expectations of the model being used. Misfit can occur in two main contexts: judge misfit and item misfit.
In 2023 RM Compare was used in every continent (ok - with the exception of Antarctica!). In doing so it helped to validate one of our key hypotheses.
2024 is going to be an even more exciting year for RM Compare.
How long will it take for Judges to make their decisions? How will this influence the Judge workload? It depends!
Did you know that you can use your AI assistants to help you get even more from RM Compare?
It's been a while since our last Newsletter - we've been quite busy! In this edition we take a look back at an amazing year and look forward to what's coming next.