Exam marking software
Exam marking software for GCSE and A-level science and maths.
GradeDrive reads a scanned class set against your mark scheme and suggests a mark for every question. You review each one next to the student's own answer, change anything you disagree with, and export when you are happy. Nothing is recorded until you have seen it.
Why UK secondary schools are moving off manual marking.
Manual exam marking software for a department usually means a spreadsheet, a stack of scanned PDFs, and whichever teacher has time that week. It scales badly: a department of six science teachers marking six mock sets by hand loses the same evening, every time, to the same pile of papers. GradeDrive is built specifically for that gap, as AI marking software for UK secondary schools rather than a general-purpose grading tool adapted for exams.
What the software does.
A teacher scans the class set into one PDF, uploads it with the mark scheme, and confirms where each student's paper starts and ends. GradeDrive then marks every question against the criteria in that scheme. For each mark it shows which criterion it matched, so you can check the reasoning behind every number.
You can export three things: a CSV of marks for your own markbook, a feedback sheet for each student, and an analysis report on how the class did across the paper.
Four steps.
- 1. Scan the class together
- Slice the spines off the scripts and batch scan them into one PDF.
- 2. Upload
- Create an assessment, choose the subject, add the mark scheme and the scanned scripts, then confirm the automatic splits.
- 3. Review
- Each question opens with the script on one side and the model answer and criteria on the other. Change any mark you disagree with.
- 4. Export
- Take away a CSV of marks, a feedback sheet for each student and an analysis report on how the class did.
Four subjects, done right.
GradeDrive officially supports four subjects at GCSE and A-level: Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Maths, including Combined Science and Further Maths. Those are the subjects where the mark scheme states its criteria clearly enough for review to be quick. English support is experimental, and we would rather tell you that here than have you find out in mock week.
GradeDrive marks against whichever mark scheme you upload, so it is not tied to one exam board.
The evidence, for whoever signs off the purchase.
A head of department asking "does this actually work" deserves two different answers, not one blended number. Independently: two case studies on SSRN pitted GradeDrive against official AQA marks on papers AQA itself chose as hardest to mark consistently, scoring a quadratic-weighted kappa of 0.885 on GCSE Physics and 0.864 on A-level Maths. From our own usage: across roughly 216,000 marks and 2,300 submissions last summer, teachers changed 0.8% of what GradeDrive suggested after reviewing every single one. The second number describes our users' behaviour, not an external audit of our accuracy, and we would rather you knew the difference before you buy.
For a department or a trust.
A school or trust can buy GradeDrive for a department. We set up an organisation, and every teacher in it marks against an allowance the manager controls: a shared pool, or an individual allocation per teacher. Marksheets and class tracking are free for every account.
Trusts with several schools can contact us and we will set up the admin side with you.
What your DPO will ask.
- Where data lives
- Stored in the EU/EEA and encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Training
- Your mark schemes and student scripts are not used to train models.
- Retention
- Student data is kept for 18 months from upload and then removed, or sooner if you delete it.
- Roles
- Your school is the data controller and GradeDrive is the processor, under the Data Processing Addendum in our Terms.
What it costs.
Every account starts with a one-time free allowance, so you can mark a real class set and decide whether you agree with the marks before paying anything. Paid plans and school allowances are on the pricing page.
Questions people ask.
- What is exam marking software?
- Software that reads student answers against a mark scheme and suggests marks. With GradeDrive, a teacher reviews every suggestion before it counts.
- Does it work with handwritten papers?
- Yes. You scan the paper your students actually sat and upload the PDF. It works best when handwriting and page edges are clearly readable in the scan.
- Which exam boards does it work with?
- Whichever mark scheme you upload. Our two accuracy case studies used official AQA mark schemes.
- Can it replace a teacher's marking?
- No. It does the first read-through, and the teacher reviews and decides every mark before it is recorded.
- Is there a free version?
- Yes. Every account starts with a one-time free allowance, so you can mark a real class set before paying anything.