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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Universal Paperclips
Economist Charles Goodhart warned that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The paperclip AI is that warning turned into a toy: once “number of paperclips” becomes the only thing that counts, every other value is expendable. When I look at how AI is being introduced into education, especially assessment, I sometimes worry we are drifting towards our own paperclip machines.
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Using Comparative Judgement to keep exam grades fair when tests change (OFQUAL Research report 2025)
Every year, exams change. New papers are written, formats evolve, and sometimes whole qualifications are refreshed. Yet everyone from students, parents, teachers and universities still expects one simple promise to hold: a grade this year should mean the same as a grade last year. So what do you do then?
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The OECD Just Mapped the Certification Problem. Here's the Solution.
A response to the OECD's The Theory and Practice of Upper Secondary Certification (2026). The OECD report has mapped the territory of the problem with exceptional care. The standardisation challenge is real, it is persistent, and it has defeated every country that has tried to solve it from within the existing paradigm. The solution is not a better mark scheme. It is a better question.
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Newsletter April 2026
Welcome to our latest 'bumper' newsletter - there is just so much going on right now! It's hard to think of a time in assessment that has had so much transformation and change taking place. Not only that but the change continues to come from all angles - policy, technological, pedagogical etc etc.
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Mobley vs Workday – an update on the case that is challenging AI assessment
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.
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"How hard is this task?" - assessing difficulty
Comparative judgement is most commonly used to answer a simple question: Which of these pieces of work is better? Teachers and examiners compare two responses, choose one, and behind the scenes an algorithm turns many such decisions into a reliable rank order and a scale. That idea now underpins everything from trust‑wide writing assessments to high‑stakes awarding. The same engine can answer a different question: Which of these tasks is harder?
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From pilots to products: how organisations can modernise without blowing everything up
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.
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The Human Skill That Still Eludes AI – And Why Assessment Needs Ground Truth
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.
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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.