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🧭Maintaining standards in Steady State
Maintaining standards in Steady State
A shared standard should be stable enough to trust and flexible enough to remain useful. Steady State is an approach to maintaining that balance over time.
Once a trusted rank has become a ruler, new work can be compared against the existing ruler. The new work finds its place on the established scale, without requiring the whole standard to be recreated for every new cohort or assessment activity.
Use the standard repeatedly. Review it deliberately. Refresh it only when needed.
The Steady State model
Traditional comparative judgement creates a rank for a particular set of items. A ruler allows that rank to be reused as a reference scale.
In Steady State, the ruler remains stable while new work is placed against it:
Trusted ruler + New work→New work positioned on the existing scale
This changes the question from:
“Which item is better in this new group?”
to:
“Where does this new item sit on the standard we already trust?”
The initial rank provides continuity. New work can be interpreted against the same shared reference point across classes, centres, cohorts or assessment moments.
What stays stable
The ruler is the trusted reference standard. It should not change automatically whenever new work is added or used in Live.
Keeping the ruler stable helps organisations:
- Apply a consistent standard across different users and locations.
- Compare new work with a known reference point.
- Avoid rebuilding a full comparative-judgement rank for every assessment event.
- Preserve a clear record of the evidence behind a judgement.
- Identify meaningful change over time.
Routine use of a ruler produces information about new work; it does not automatically change the ruler itself.
Monitor and review
Over time, assessment owners should review whether a shared standard remains suitable for its purpose.
Consider reviewing:
- Whether new work remains comparable with the ruler’s assessment domain.
- Whether the ruler is being used consistently across teams or licence centres.
- Whether the repository still reflects the relevant range of quality.
- Whether the task, curriculum, qualification, framework or professional context has changed.
- Whether users need additional guidance or reference material.
- Whether the ruler needs to be refreshed, extended or retired.
Hub provides the governance layer for managing access to shared standards and supporting this ongoing review.
Refreshing a standard
A ruler should be refreshed through a controlled process - not automatically.
Where an organisation identifies a need to update or extend a standard, it can:
- Select suitable evidence from the Standards Repository.
- Review the evidence for relevance, context, permissions and intended use.
- Use 💻Studio to comparatively judge the selected material against appropriate reference items.
- Review and approve the resulting rank or updated reference material.
- Publish the revised ruler through 🧭Hub for authorised use in 📳Live.
This ensures that changes to a shared standard are intentional, transparent and governed.
When to refresh
A refresh may be appropriate when:
- The existing evidence no longer represents the work being assessed.
- A new approved task type, genre or assessment format is introduced.
- A curriculum, specification or framework changes materially.
- Important parts of the quality range are underrepresented.
- The organisation needs stronger or more current reference material.
- Monitoring indicates that the current ruler may no longer be suitable for its intended use.
A refresh is not always required simply because new work has been assessed. In many cases, the existing ruler can continue to provide a stable and useful reference point.
Extending the standard
A full Steady State model also allows a standard to evolve.
For example, an organisation may want to introduce new tasks, new examples or new contexts while preserving continuity with the original standard. Selected new material can be brought into a controlled standard-setting process, linking it to the existing ruler rather than creating a completely disconnected scale.
This is the longer-term Steady State direction: standards can develop with changing evidence and contexts while retaining a meaningful relationship with what came before. RM Compare’s current ruler model enables new work to be placed on trusted scales; extending rulers with new items or tasks is the next step towards a fuller Steady State model.
Versioning and ownership
Every shared standard should have a clear owner and review process.
Good practice includes:
- Recording the standard’s purpose and assessment domain.
- Identifying who can approve changes.
- Recording review dates and significant updates.
- Retaining earlier versions where historical interpretation is required.
- Communicating changes to users before a revised ruler is used.
- Retiring rulers that are no longer appropriate for new assessment decisions.
For roles, permissions and licence-centre controls, see Administration.