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Step-by-step guide

Getting Started with
GradeOrbit

Follow these steps to set up your account and start marking student work with AI assistance.

01

Upload Your Mark Schemes

Mark schemes are the rubrics from your exam board — the standards you grade against. In GradeOrbit, mark schemes are reusable: upload them once and apply them to any assessment at the same qualification level.

  • Upload photos of your mark scheme pages, or type them in manually
  • Supports KS3, GCSE, A-Level, BTEC, and Functional Skills qualification levels
  • Works with AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, and WJEC exam boards. Key Stage 3 has no exam boards, so use your own department mark scheme
  • Key Stage 3 (not maths): add your department’s numbered target sheet to the mark scheme, and each student gets one target to focus on instead of general improvement points
  • Criteria are saved to your account and reusable across assessments
  • Handwritten and printed text is read automatically from uploaded images
Go to Mark Schemes
02

Create an Assessment

An assessment represents one class assignment — for example, "Year 10 Macbeth Essay" or "GCSE Geography Fieldwork Report". You configure it once, then mark as many students as you need.

  • Give your assessment a name and select the qualification level. Choose the exam board only if your mark scheme doesn’t already name one (Key Stage 3 has no exam board)
  • Optionally upload reference texts — the source materials students were working from
  • Select your saved mark scheme to grade against
Go to Assessments
03

Upload & Mark Student Work

Upload photos of student work and submit them for AI analysis. GradeOrbit supports multi-page documents and gives you tools to protect student privacy before anything is processed.

  • Upload from your desktop, or scan with your phone via QR code pairing
  • Support for multi-page documents — add as many pages as needed per student
  • Draw black boxes to redact any personal information before AI processing
  • Students are identified anonymously as "Student 1", "Student 2", etc.
  • We never save uploaded student work — images are processed and discarded
Scan a QR code and your phone becomes a scanner via WebRTC — no app needed
Redaction boxes are permanently burnt in using Canvas API before upload
04

Review AI Feedback

The AI analyses each student's work against your mark scheme and provides structured feedback. You review everything, edit anything you want to change, and make the final call — GradeOrbit assists, you decide.

  • Receive a suggested grade aligned to your mark scheme and exam board
  • One-tap feedback on the grade: tell us if the mark was Too low, About right, or Too high with an optional note to help tune marking quality
  • With a Key Stage 3 target sheet attached, a Targets tab lists every target with the student’s focus highlighted — click another target to change it. Export a one-page DIRT report for the student (or everyone in one file) instead of a report
  • Full transcription of handwritten student work, making it searchable
  • Categorised feedback: positive (green) and constructive (amber)
  • Feedback pinpointed to exact locations in student work with bounding boxes
  • Tap Edit to change anything — the grade, summary, feedback comments and their highlight boxes, and suggested improvements; Revert puts any item back to the AI’s original
  • Export each student's marked work as a PDF — your edits are what the PDF shows, so what you hand back is your version, not just the AI's
  • Mark as many students as needed using the same assessment setup
  • Run out mid-marking? Switch on overage and keep going — each extra paper costs 20p, billed on the 1st of the month, up to a monthly limit you set
1 credit per student marked, however long their work is — a 20-page mock costs the same as a 2-page test
Handwriting transcription is always free

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about using GradeOrbit.

On individual accounts, no. We never save uploaded student work to our database or any other service — images are processed for AI analysis and then discarded. School accounts are different by design: work is retained under a data processing agreement so teachers can return to it and results stay on file.
How school accounts handle data
On individual accounts, anonymously. Students are labelled as "Student 1", "Student 2", and so on, and GradeOrbit never attempts to detect, store, or process student names or personal information. School accounts match work to your own roster, so real pupil names are used.
Yes, if your school uses Wonde. Connect it from Integrations and your classes, students and year groups sync overnight, with a Sync now button when you need it sooner. Your MIS then becomes the source of truth — you add and edit students there, not in GradeOrbit — and disconnecting gives you full control back. It is included at no extra cost. We only ask Wonde for names, year groups, classes and school email addresses.
GradeOrbit supports AQA, Edexcel, OCR, Eduqas, and WJEC across GCSE, A-Level, BTEC, and Functional Skills, with mark schemes and grading aligned to each board's standards. Key Stage 3 has no exam boards, so there you mark against your own department's mark scheme instead.
Yes. For Key Stage 3, upload your own department mark scheme, for example a mark out of 15 with levels, and there is no exam board to choose. Add your department's numbered target sheet to the mark scheme and each student gets a score plus the one target to focus on, instead of a list of general improvement points. You can export a one-page DIRT report for each student, or everyone in one file, with their score, target, feedback and a lined box for their response, ready to print for exercise books.
You pick a monthly or yearly plan, and it gives you an allowance of credits each month. Marking costs 1 credit per student, and handwriting transcription is always free. Most new teacher accounts start with 10 free credits to try it out — no credit card required. If you run out mid-marking you can switch on overage and keep going: each extra paper costs a flat 20p, billed on the 1st of the month, up to a monthly limit you set (£10 by default) that we never bill you above.
View pricing details
One whole piece of work, however long it is. Marking a student's work costs 1 credit whether it runs to two pages or twenty — there is no charge per page, per question, per answer or per submission, so a full mock costs you exactly the same as a short class test. Handwriting transcription is always free.
View pricing details
Yes! From the marking page on your desktop, scan the QR code with your phone. Your phone becomes a document scanner via WebRTC — photos transfer instantly to your desktop with no app to install.
Yes. Handwriting is transcribed in full before it is marked, so a scanned or photographed paper is graded the same way a typed one is — and you get the transcription alongside the marks, so every script becomes searchable. Messy handwriting is the normal case, not the exception, and transcription is always free.
No. You stay the marker. GradeOrbit suggests a mark against your mark scheme and shows its working, and you review, change or approve every one before you use it. We publish how closely the AI matches senior examiners in GCSE Maths and English, with the method and its limits, so you can judge for yourself.
See the full accuracy results
We test it against exam board exemplar scripts marked by senior examiners. In GCSE Maths, 96% of the AI's marks were within 1 mark of the examiner's; in GCSE English, 97% were within 2 marks. Figures for more subjects are on the way. Whatever the AI suggests, you review and approve every mark.
See the full accuracy results
GradeOrbit runs on Google's Gemini models, called under terms that rule out training, so your uploads are never used to train any AI model. If a model is briefly unavailable we automatically fall back to another in the chain, so a transient outage does not cost you a mark. You do not need to pick a model — there is one marking engine and it is the same for everyone.
Yes. If you signed up with your school email and your school has a GradeOrbit school account, your dashboard offers to request access. Your school's GradeOrbit admins get an email and can send you an invite, which you accept with your existing login. Your school is only told when you choose to ask. Your personal credits stay on your own account, and your own mark schemes aren't copied into the school.