Policy
Is AI marking allowed in UK schools?
Short answer: yes, for formative work, as long as the teacher stays responsible for the outcome. The longer answer is the part a head of department will actually ask you about — who decides the mark, where the work is stored, and what happens if a parent queries it.
What the DfE has said
In June 2025 the Department for Education backed teachers using AI for routine marking and feedback, on the condition that the teacher remains in control of the outcome. That is a meaningful endorsement and a meaningful limit at the same time, and the limit is where most of the detail lives.
"In control" is not satisfied by a tool being generally supervised, or by a teacher having the option to look. It means the AI output is a proposal and the teacher is the one who decides. If a mark can reach a student without a teacher approving that specific mark, the condition is not met, whatever the marketing says.
Guidance does change. Check the current DfE position before you write anything into a department policy, and note that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own arrangements.
What it permits
- Marking classwork, homework and practice essays where the teacher reviews and publishes the result.
- Drafting feedback for a teacher to edit.
- Applying a department's own mark scheme consistently across a class set.
- Reducing the time cost of formative assessment so more of it happens.
What it does not cover
- Final reported grades. Anything that goes on a student's record is a teacher's decision, made by a teacher.
- Public examinations. Not yours to automate, and not in scope.
- Predicted grades and references. High-stakes, contested, and consequential for the student.
- Non-examined assessment. Coursework and NEA carry their own exam board and JCQ requirements, including authentication of the student's own work. Treat anything assessed as out of bounds unless your board says otherwise, in writing.
The clean line to hold is: AI can help with the marking that never gets done because there is not time. It does not touch the marking that counts towards a qualification.
The data protection part
This is where adoption usually stalls, and it is a fair place for it to stall. Student work is personal data, and a piece of extended writing by a sixteen-year-old can contain a great deal more personal data than the writer intended.
Under UK GDPR the school is the controller and the tool provider is a processor. That relationship has to be documented in a written data processing agreement. A free account signed up by one teacher on a Sunday evening does not create that agreement, which is why a department rollout is a different conversation from a personal trial.
Questions to get answered in writing
- Where is the data stored, and in which jurisdiction?
- Is student work used to train AI models? "No" should be unambiguous and contractual.
- What sub-processors are involved — which model provider, which host?
- How long is work retained, and can you delete it on demand?
- What identifying information is collected from students? Full names and school email addresses are a much bigger ask than a first name.
- Is there a data processing agreement you can sign, and a named contact?
Two other things worth thinking through before your DPO does. A tool that requires every student to hold an account has created a set of child accounts the school is now responsible for; one that takes submissions through a link with a first name has not. And under UK GDPR there is a right not to be subject to a solely automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects — which is another route to the same conclusion as the DfE's, namely that a human has to be the one deciding.
What to tell a head of department
The honest version is short, and it holds up:
Every mark is a proposal. I read it, I change what I disagree with, and nothing reaches a student until I publish it. It is used for practice work, never for reported grades. The work is stored in the EU, students do not have accounts, and it is not used to train any model.
If you cannot say all of that about the tool you are using, the objection is not really about AI.
This page describes how these rules are generally understood in schools. It is not legal advice, and your school's DPO is the person who signs anything off.
How Paddle is built for this
Paddle marks against your own mark scheme and returns a proposal: a score per criterion, feedback, and the phrase from the student's own writing each mark rests on. You edit anything you disagree with and press publish. There is no route by which a mark reaches a student without that step.
Students submit through one link and are asked for a first name only — no accounts. Work is stored in the EU and is never used to train AI models, and you can delete an assignment and every submission on it at any time. Paddle is intended for formative classwork, not for final reported grades.
See what a marked script looks like
The fastest way to answer a head of department is to show them one — the mark, the evidence quoted for it, and the publish button that is still yours to press.
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