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Grade Orbit
Changelog

What's New

New updates and improvements to GradeOrbit.

1.60.1

Teaching Assistant is now free

Ask the Teaching Assistant as many questions as you like about a mark — it no longer uses credits.

Improvements

  • Open the Teaching Assistant on any marked result and ask why a grade was awarded, without spending a credit.
  • Ask follow-up questions in the same conversation — there’s no per-message charge and no limit on how many you send.
  • Works the same way for individual teacher accounts and school accounts.
  • Everything else about the Teaching Assistant is unchanged — it still answers from your mark scheme and the exact marks awarded.
1.59.1

Upload your scheme of work as a Word document

Scheme-of-work uploads in Lesson Planning now accept .docx Word files — no need to export to PDF first.

Improvements

  • Upload your Word scheme of work directly and we’ll read it into the same weeks, units and lessons a PDF would produce.
  • Tables in your Word document (Topic, Objectives, Key Content, and so on) are mapped to the right fields automatically.
  • Works the same way for individual teacher accounts and school accounts.
  • For a heavily formatted scheme, exporting to PDF first may preserve the layout slightly better.
1.59.0

Faster marking with our newest AI model

We’ve upgraded the AI behind your marking to Google’s newest model — it’s quicker, so your marks and feedback come back sooner. Nothing about how you mark, the quality of the feedback, or the price of a credit changes.

Improvements

  • Marking, mark schemes, feedback, AI detection and lesson PowerPoints all use the faster model automatically — there’s nothing to switch on.
  • The same careful marking you rely on: identical grading, the same depth of feedback, and grades that stay consistent when you re-mark a paper.
  • If the new model is ever briefly busy, we quietly fall back to a proven model so your mark still comes through — and you’re never charged extra for that.
  • Your credits, plans and bundles are unchanged.
1.58.1

AI detection has moved to school accounts only

We’ve removed the standalone AI-detection tool from Solo and Team accounts. Judging a single piece of work against a generic “does this look like AI?” score isn’t reliable enough to raise with a pupil — independent studies show these checkers wrongly flag plain and non-native writers — so we’d rather not offer a feature you can’t safely act on.

Improvements

  • Your marking, mark schemes, feedback and everything else are completely unchanged.
  • AI detection now lives only in school accounts, where it works differently: it compares a pupil’s new work against their own earlier writing that the school already holds — a fairer, more honest signal — and is always framed as an indicator to review, never proof.
  • Any credits you have are unaffected; going forward they’re spent on marking and lesson PowerPoints.
1.57.0

Lesson PowerPoints now reuse your own slide designs

Upload one of your own PowerPoints as a style reference and every lesson PowerPoint we generate is now built from your actual slides — your boxes, your colours, your fonts, your layout — with the text swapped for the new lesson.

Improvements

  • We treat your reference PowerPoint as a set of reusable slide designs. Each generated slide picks the design that fits — your starter slide for starters, your task slide for tasks — and fills it with the new lesson’s content.
  • Your designs are reused as many times as needed, so a short reference PowerPoint can still produce a full-length lesson.
  • Decorations, fonts, background shapes and animations are kept exactly as you made them. Pictures that belong to the original topic are swapped out or removed, never carried into a different lesson.
  • Editing slides still works and stays free — your changes go back into the same slide designs.
  • No reference PowerPoint uploaded? Nothing changes: decks generate exactly as before, in your chosen colour.
  • Re-upload your reference PowerPoint if you want existing schemes to pick up the new slide-design treatment — it applies to PowerPoints uploaded from today.
1.56.0

Plan lessons and generate PowerPoints — new in GradeOrbit

Bring in your scheme of work — or build one from scratch — jot a rough idea for each lesson, and GradeOrbit turns it into a ready-to-teach lesson PowerPoint in your school’s colours and fonts.

Improvements

  • Upload a photo or PDF of your scheme of work and we read it into an editable planner — or start from a blank one. Setting up your scheme is free.
  • Write a rough idea for each lesson and generate a full lesson PowerPoint from it. Each PowerPoint uses 2 credits from your usual monthly allowance.
  • Upload one of your own PowerPoints once, and everything we generate picks up its colours and fonts.
  • Teaching the same lesson to different sets? Generate a version adapted for each class set.
  • Preview every PowerPoint in the app before downloading — and everything you generate is kept, so you can come back to it any time.
1.55.0

Set a monthly limit on what overage can cost you

Overage keeps your marking going when your plan credits run out — but until now there was nothing stopping the bill. Now you set a monthly limit when you turn it on, and we never bill you above it.

Improvements

  • When you switch overage on, we now tell you exactly what it costs and when we take the money — and ask you to set a monthly limit (£10 by default).
  • Marking stops when you reach your limit, rather than quietly carrying on. Raise the limit and marking picks up exactly where it left off — nothing is re-marked, nothing is lost.
  • The credits pill in the top bar now shows what you have spent in pounds while you are on overage — e.g. £4.20 / £10 — so the bill is never a surprise.
  • Team owners get an email at 80% of the team’s limit and again when the team reaches it, because any teacher in the team can spend from it.
  • You can raise or lower your limit whenever you like — just not below what you have already used this month.
1.54.0

Choose how you sign in — and never get locked out

If you sign in with Google or Microsoft, you can now add a password too — so losing access to that account never means losing access to GradeOrbit.

Improvements

  • Your account’s Security page now shows a Login methods list — every way you can sign in (email & password, Google, Microsoft) in one place.
  • Signed up with Google or Microsoft? You can now set a password from the Security page and sign in with your email as well.
  • You can connect or remove Google and Microsoft sign-in whenever you like — we always keep at least one way in, so you can’t lock yourself out.
  • Lost access to the account you signed up with? Use Forgot password on the login page — it now fully switches you to email sign-in.
1.52.0

A tidier sidebar — and “Marking Criteria” is now “Mark Schemes”

We’ve reorganised the app’s navigation so your daily work sits at the top, and renamed a few things to match the words UK teachers actually use.

Improvements

  • Marking Criteria is now called Mark Schemes everywhere in the app. Nothing else has changed — your existing mark schemes are exactly where you left them.
  • For school admins, the sidebar is now grouped by what you’re doing: Teaching (marking, mark schemes, AI detection), Organisation (students, classes, teachers) and Admin (billing, data) — with a Home link at the very top.
  • Usage now lives as a tab on the Billing page, so credit spend and activity are on one screen. Old links to the Usage page take you straight there.
  • The Data page is now called Data & Privacy, so it’s clearer that retention and data-protection settings live there.
1.46.0

More accurate, question-by-question marking for maths

Tag a marking criteria as Maths and GradeOrbit now marks every question on the paper individually, following your mark scheme point by point.

Improvements

  • New Subject field when you create or edit a marking criteria — pick Maths (or any other subject) from the list, or your own school’s class subjects.
  • For a Maths criteria, every question and sub-question gets its own tick, cross, or half-mark right on the scanned paper, plus a short comment — not just a handful of highlights.
  • Marks now follow each individual mark-scheme point (e.g. M1, A1, B1) rather than one overall judgement — so a correct-looking answer that skips a required step (like showing your working, or drawing a smooth curve instead of a straight line) is marked accurately.
  • The overview breakdown table is unchanged — the paper itself now carries the same level of detail.
  • Schools get a new Regrade button on the run page: pick which students to re-mark, or regrade everyone at once, after tweaking your criteria.
  • Marking any other subject is completely unchanged.