Marking and assessment glossary

AI marking is the use of artificial intelligence to assess student work against defined criteria - a mark scheme or a teacher's own marking guidelines - and to draft marks and feedback for a teacher to review.

Assessment for learning is the practice of using evidence of what students currently understand to decide what to teach next, and to help students see what they need to do to improve.

Assessment objectives are the categories of skill a qualification tests - commonly labelled AO1, AO2 and AO3 - each carrying a defined share of the available marks.

Comparative judgement is an assessment method in which markers repeatedly choose the better of two pieces of work, and those paired decisions are combined statistically into a rank order.

Criterion-referenced assessment judges work against defined standards of what a student should know or be able to do, rather than against how other students performed.

An exemplar is a piece of work - often a real student answer - presented with its marks and commentary to show what a particular standard looks like in practice.

Formative assessment is assessment used during learning to find out what students can and cannot yet do, so that teaching can be adjusted in response.

Grade boundaries are the minimum marks required for each grade in a qualification, set after marking so that a grade means the same thing from one year to the next.

Inter-rater reliability is the extent to which different markers award the same mark to the same piece of work - a measure of how far a mark depends on who marked it.

Levels of response marking awards marks by deciding which band descriptor an answer best fits as a whole, rather than by adding up credit for individual points.

A mark scheme is the document that sets out how marks are awarded for each question in an assessment - the answers or qualities that earn credit, and how many marks each is worth.

Moderation is the process by which teachers compare samples of marked work to check that a mark scheme has been applied consistently, so the same work would receive the same mark whoever marked it.

Non-exam assessment is work that counts towards a qualification but is completed outside examination conditions - coursework, practical or project work - usually marked in school and moderated by the exam board.

Question level analysis is the practice of breaking assessment results down question by question, rather than looking only at totals, to see exactly where marks were gained and lost.

Standardisation is the process of agreeing how a mark scheme should be applied before marking begins - typically by marking exemplar work together - so that every marker works to the same standard.

Summative assessment is assessment used to measure and report what a student has achieved at the end of a period of teaching, such as an end-of-unit test, a mock or a public examination.

Whole-class feedback is the practice of reading a set of work, recording the patterns across it, and addressing those patterns with the class together instead of writing individual comments on every piece.