Marking Assistant

Mark exam papers without losing your weekend.

Upload, annotate, score, and email marked papers from one screen. Built by a science teacher who got tired of losing every weekend to the marking pile.

No credit card
Works offline
You control your data
Marking Assistant in light mode — marking a chemistry paper Marking Assistant in dark mode — marking a chemistry paper

Real screenshot — tap Light / Dark to preview both themes.

Built for the curricula you actually teach

IB PYP IB MYP IB Diploma (DP) GCSE IGCSE A-Level AP AQA Edexcel (Pearson) OCR Cambridge (CAIE) WJEC CCEA SQA BTEC HKDSE CBSE ICSE Australian Curriculum NGSS / Common Core

Curriculum-agnostic — set your own marks, grade boundaries, and rubric for any board.

See it in action

A one-minute walkthrough of uploading papers, marking with auto-score, and emailing marked copies back.

Marking takes your evenings.
It shouldn't.

A class of thirty mock papers takes most teachers six to eight hours by hand. Then there's the spreadsheet of scores, the grade boundaries, the emails to parents. Marking Assistant collapses that into one workflow — annotate the paper, the score updates itself, the email writes itself.

Auto-scored

Every tick adds 1, every half-mark 0.5. Score, percentage, and grade update live as you mark — no spreadsheet tally at the end.

Batch mode

Mark one question across the whole class in a single sitting, without flipping back and forth between papers.

1 click

Email a marked paper back to a student — or the whole class at once via Gmail.

Features

Everything you need to mark a paper.
Nothing you don't.

Built around the actual workflow of a busy classroom teacher — not a software engineer.

Live annotation canvas

Tick, cross, ECF, BOD, half-marks, comment boxes, highlighter, freehand pen. All the symbols you actually use, on a smooth Fabric.js canvas.

Auto-scoring & grades

Every tick adds to the score automatically. Set your grade boundaries once, save the template, reuse forever.

OCR student name detection

Upload a stack of scanned papers — the app reads the names, fuzzy-matches them to your class list, and files them automatically. For anything the OCR can't read cleanly, pick the student manually from a searchable list in seconds.

Batch marking mode

Mark Q3 across all 28 papers in a row. Auto-saves and jumps to the same question on the next student. Spotted a mark-scheme mistake halfway through? Jump back, re-mark that one question across every paper, and the scores update themselves.

One-click email

Send marked PDFs to students and parents from your own Gmail. Bulk-send the whole class, with merge fields for name, score, grade, and your feedback.

Class & question analytics

See which questions tripped the class up. Track student progress over time. Spot the topics that need re-teaching before parents' evening.

CSV class import

Drop in a class list from your school MIS. Names, emails, classes — sorted into folders in under a minute.

Mark anywhere, online or off

Mark on the bus, in the staff room, waiting for an appointment — the app runs fully offline on any device with a browser. When you're back online, everything syncs to your cloud automatically. Works on Windows, Mac, iPad and Android.

Privacy-first by design

Papers, annotations and grades are stored locally in your browser, not on our servers. No third-party analytics. No data harvesting. No AI model training on your students' work — and you can run the whole app fully offline if your school requires it.

Upload in seconds

Scan a stack. Or let the class upload their own.

Use any scanner or phone camera to digitise a pile of papers — drop them in and the app sorts them by student automatically. Even quicker: share a drop folder with the class, have them upload photos of their own work, and hundreds of papers land in the app in seconds.

  • Bulk scan a class of papers on any printer or document scanner
  • Phone uploads — students photograph their own scripts and drop them in a shared folder
  • OCR matches names to your class list automatically, so papers file themselves
  • Or pick manually — if a scan is messy, select the student from a searchable list in a couple of clicks
  • Individual or bulk — mark one paper or a whole class, whichever you prefer
Drop 28 scanned papers
or connect a shared folder
Sarah_Chen.pdf → 10A
IMG_4421.jpg → John Smith, 10A
scan_028.pdf → Priya Raman, 10A
…25 more sorted in under 30 seconds
Student self-marking workflow
1
Scan the papers. Hand the unmarked scripts back.
2
Students self-mark using the mark scheme and give themselves a score.
3
Share your marked copy. They compare to your marks and see exactly where they went wrong.
Formative assessment actually happens. They read the mark scheme. They reflect. The learning sticks.
"How many times have your students glanced at the score, ignored everything else, and stuffed the paper into their bag?"
Turn marking into learning

Have students mark their own work first.

We've all seen it. You hand a marked paper back, the student looks at the score, and that's it. The mark scheme — where the actual learning lives — barely gets a glance.

Marking Assistant gives you a simple way around it. Scan the papers, hand the unmarked originals back to the class, and have students mark their own work against the scheme first. Once they've done that, share your marked copy so they can compare. Now they have to read the mark scheme, and they can see exactly where their answer fell short of yours.

Works for end-of-topic tests, mocks, or any class quiz where formative feedback matters more than a grade in a spreadsheet.

Multiple-choice marking

Pick a template.
Marked in seconds.

Set your answer key once, scan or upload the answer sheets, and every paper is marked for you. Scores drop straight into the grade book alongside your written-paper marks — no adding up, no converting scores to percentages or grades, no spreadsheet juggling.

  • Three ready-made templates — 10, 30 or 50 questions
  • Set the key once — type in the correct answers for the whole class
  • Auto-scoring — every paper marked against the key, no ticks to place yourself
  • Straight to the grade book — scores filed under the right student automatically
  • Same OCR name-matching — drop a stack of answer sheets and the app sorts them
Choose a template
10
questions
30
questions
50
questions
Sarah Chen
Year 10 Bio Quiz · 30 Q
Grade 8
26 / 30 86.7%
Filed in grade book — 10A Biology
How it works

From paper stack to sent emails
in three steps.

1

Upload

Drag in scanned papers, PDFs or Word docs. The app detects student names automatically, or you can pick the student manually from your class list — papers end up in the right folder either way.

2

Mark

Tap to tick, drag to highlight, type to comment. The score and grade update live as you mark. Use batch mode to fly through one question across the whole class.

3

Send

Hit "Email all" — the marked PDFs go out from your own Gmail account to students and parents, with each student's name, score, grade and personalised feedback merged in. Outlook / Microsoft 365 send is on the roadmap.

Early access feedback

Teachers are getting their
weekends back.

★★★★★

"I marked an entire set of mocks in one evening instead of the whole weekend. Batch mode is genuinely a game-changer — once you've used it you can't go back."

SH
Sarah H.
Head of Science, UK
★★★★★

"The OCR name detection alone saves me twenty minutes per class. I used to sort papers by hand. Now I just upload the stack and they file themselves."

DT
David T.
Chemistry teacher, Singapore
★★★★★

"Sending marked papers home used to be its own job. Now I hit one button after marking and the whole class gets their feedback before the bell."

PR
Priya R.
English teacher, IB World School

Quotes from early access teachers. Names changed for privacy.

Pricing

Try it free for 30 days.

Free trial covers 100 papers or 30 days, whichever comes first. No credit card, no auto-charge — when the trial ends the app keeps working, you just get a prompt to subscribe.

Free trial

Try the full app before you commit.

£0 for 30 days
Start marking free
  • 100 papers or 30 days, whichever first
  • Add as many classes & students as you need
  • All annotation tools & custom stamps
  • Auto-scoring & grade boundaries
  • OCR student name detection
  • Gmail integration
  • No credit card — the app keeps running after the trial ends, you'll just see an upgrade prompt

Looking for a school-wide or department licence?

FAQ

Questions teachers actually ask.

Where is my students' data stored? +

Papers, annotations, grades and class lists live locally on your device in your browser's IndexedDB. We don't run a server that holds this data.

What can leave your device, and only when you choose:

  • OCR (name / text recognition) — you can use the on-device Tesseract engine, in which case nothing leaves the device. If you opt in to Google Cloud Vision for better handwriting accuracy, the scanned page is sent to Google's Vision API via our secure proxy. Google's data-processing terms apply (no training on customer data, no retention beyond what's needed to return the result), and we do not retain a copy either.
  • Email sending — when you click "Email to student" or "Email to parent", the marked PDF is sent through your own Gmail account, the same as if you attached it to an email manually.
  • Cloud sync (optional) — Google Drive or OneDrive sync is off by default. If you turn it on, pages and annotations are stored in your Drive/OneDrive, under your control.
  • Authentication — your email address and sign-in events are handled by Firebase Auth (Google Cloud).

For the strictest privacy posture, use the Tesseract OCR fallback and leave cloud sync switched off. The app then runs fully offline against your local files only.

How does the free trial work? +

You get 100 papers or 30 days of use — whichever comes first. A "paper" is one upload: only the first page is OCR'd, so a multi-page exam still counts as one.

No credit card up front. When you hit either limit the app doesn't lock you out — it keeps working, but you'll see an upgrade prompt inviting you to subscribe. You can see exactly where you stand (papers used, days remaining) in Settings.

If 100 papers isn't enough for the way you mark, get in touch — I'd rather extend the trial than lose you before you've seen what it can do.

Is there a limit on how many pages I can scan? +
During the free trial you can scan up to 100 papers in 30 days — see the free trial FAQ above.

On paid plans there's a fair-use cap of 1,000 handwriting-OCR pages per rolling 30 days per account — more than enough for a normal teaching load.

If you do hit the cap, the app silently switches to the on-device Tesseract OCR engine (which has no per-month cap and is completely free to use) for the rest of the window. You'll see your current usage in Settings at any time.
Is my students' work used to train AI models? +

No. We don't train any AI models on your data, full stop — we don't even operate a server that could do so.

The third-party services the app optionally calls are all bound by contractual commitments that explicitly forbid training on customer data:

  • Google Cloud Vision API, Gmail API, Firebase, Google Drive API — covered by Google Cloud's Data Processing Addendum. Google states customer data processed through these APIs is not used to train their general-purpose AI models.
  • Microsoft 365 / OneDrive — covered by Microsoft's commercial Data Protection Addendum, which contains the same no-training guarantee.
  • Tesseract OCR fallback — runs entirely in your browser. No data leaves the device, so the question doesn't arise.

Can I switch it off? Yes — by choosing the Tesseract OCR engine and not enabling cloud sync, you can use the app without any student data ever reaching a third-party server. You control this in Settings.

Will it work on my iPad / Android tablet? +
Yes — it runs in any modern browser (Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox) on iPad, Android tablet, or laptop. Pinch-to-zoom and two-finger pan are supported, and you can install it as a Progressive Web App for an app-like experience. A native Windows desktop version is also available.
Does it work offline? +
Yes. After the first load, the app works without an internet connection. You only need to be online when you want to email marked papers. Perfect for marking on the train, in the staff room, or anywhere the school Wi-Fi gives up.
Which exam boards / curricula does it support? +
Any of them. The app is curriculum-agnostic — you set the total marks, the grade boundaries, and the question structure for each exam. It's been built and tested against IB (PYP, MYP, DP), GCSE, IGCSE, A-Level, AP, AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Cambridge (CAIE), WJEC, BTEC, HKDSE, CBSE/ICSE and Australian Curriculum papers — but it works for any subject and any board.
What happens to my data when the beta ends? +
Nothing changes — your data lives on your device and stays there. Early-access users will keep all their existing functionality at no cost when paid plans launch, and you'll have plenty of warning before any pricing changes affect anyone.
Can I use my school Outlook / Microsoft 365 account? +
Yes — Microsoft 365 sign-in is supported alongside Google. Email sending currently works via Gmail, with Outlook send support on the roadmap.
I'm not very techy. Will I be able to use it? +
Yes — it's designed by a teacher, not an engineer. If you can drag a file onto a screen and click a tick icon, you can use it. There's a 60-second tutorial on first launch and you can email me directly if you get stuck.
Do I need to check with my school's IT department before using it? +
Yes. Every effort has been made to align Marking Assistant with GDPR and common school data-protection expectations — papers stay on your device, no third-party analytics, no data harvesting. But every school has its own data protection and privacy policies, and it is your responsibility as the individual user to confirm with your IT department that the app meets your school's requirements before uploading any student work. We're happy to provide a technical overview for your IT team on request.

A note on data protection

Every effort has been made to make Marking Assistant as compliant as possible with GDPR and the data-protection frameworks schools typically work within. Papers, annotations and grades are stored locally on your device. We don't operate a server that holds student work and we don't use any of it to train AI models. Optional cloud features (handwriting OCR via Google Cloud Vision, Gmail send, Drive/OneDrive sync) only run when you choose to enable them, and the third-party providers behind them contractually commit not to use your data for training.

However, every school has its own policies. Before using Marking Assistant with real student work, it is your responsibility as the individual user to check with your school's IT department and confirm that the app meets your school's data protection and privacy requirements. If your IT team needs technical details, point them at our security overview or email us for a one-page Data Protection Overview covering what data is handled, where it lives, sub-processors and AI-training commitments.

Get your weekends back.

Join the early-access teachers already saving hours per class. Free during beta. No credit card. Lock in your spot before paid plans launch.

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