NEW! ⚡NOW LbE Reporting
The new ⚡|NOW reporting allows a user to view work from the standard that is of a similar standard to their own, as well as work that is of a quality that is a little higher and a little lower.
Blog
Featured articles
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Newsletter October 2026
Despite being only a few weeks since our last Newsletter, we have plenty to share in this update, the highlight being the extension of RM Compare | ⚡NOW onto non-mobile devices.
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Stripping Back to the Song: Why RM Compare | ⚡NOW Does Less, on Purpose
When you build a mobile experience for comparative judgement, the temptation is to start with the desktop application and ask: how can we fit everything onto a smaller screen? With RM Compare |⚡NOW, we asked a different question: what does someone need to make a useful comparison, right now?
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New! RM Compare | ⚡NOW - now available on any device
Hot on the heels of the 'mobile first' release of RM Compare | ⚡NOW. we are pleased to make it accessible on any* device.
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Fewer Comparisons, Higher Bar: What the Latest ACJ Research Means for RM Compare Users
Recent research indicates that we can aim higher on reliability while asking judges to do less work. For RM Compare users, that is good news: it supports designing sessions that are both more efficient and more defensible.
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From Marking Errors to Life Earnings: How Comparative Judgement Can Reduce the Risk
If a single grade can change a student’s lifetime earnings, then we can’t afford a grading system that behaves like a lottery. Recent analysis shows that moving just one grade band at A‑level can translate into thousands of pounds more – or less – in annual income over a career.
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Lessons from a long life - Edgar Morin (1922 - 2026)
Edgar Morin died in Paris on 29 May 2026 at the age of 104, bringing to a close one of the most wide-ranging intellectual lives of the last century. Across that long life he returned, again and again, to one central idea: reality is not made of isolated parts that can be fully understood by breaking them down, but of interwoven systems in which order, disorder, uncertainty, part and whole are inseparable.
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Setting and Maintaining Verifiable Standards in Complex Curriculums and Aligning Teacher Assessment at Scale
As educational ministries and professional bodies globally modernise their frameworks, learning objectives have fundamentally shifted. Traditional education models assessed knowledge recall through closed, easily quantifiable test formats.
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A better way to use experts
In a recent Observer article, Dennis Sherwood warns that “a single exam result can change a pupil’s life, but grading in England is a lottery.” The piece highlights a stark tension: exam grades carry life‑changing consequences, yet the system’s own regulator acknowledges that many GCSE, AS and A‑level grades are only reliable to within about one grade either way.
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The State of Learning by Evaluating
There's a familiar moment in teaching that almost every educator recognises. You hand out the rubric, explain the assignment, and watch thirty faces look back at you with the same expression — a kind of polite blankness that says I understand the words, but I don't yet understand what you mean. The criteria make sense in the abstract. What "good" looks like in practice is another matter entirely.
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Skills England Report 2026
The annual Skills England report was issued yesterday. As always it made for interesting reading. Coming on the back of the Interim report from Alan Milburn about the parlous state of youth unemployment and education the stakes could not be higher or more urgent.
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When you know, you know
We are living through an anxious moment in education. AI is reshaping what matters, curriculum is shifting under our feet, and many of the old certainties no longer feel certain at all. In that kind of climate, assessment can easily become another source of pressure: another place where people are asked to act with confidence before they have had the chance to build it. It does not have to be like that.
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Resilience Is No Longer Enough: Why Curriculum and Assessment Need Antifragility
For years, we’ve been told that education systems need to be more “resilient”. Resilient curriculum. Resilient assessment. Resilient students. In a world of AI, that sounds reassuring, but it quietly sets the wrong ambition. Resilience, in the way we usually use it, means being able to withstand shocks and stay the same. The problem is that AI is not a one‑off storm. It is a permanent change in the climate.