Learn more about Smartgrade

Founded in 2020 to create more reliable assessments through standardisation, Smartgrade works with partner assessments to allow teachers, schools and MATs more insights into their assessments.

Teacher marking assessments with Smartgrade open on her laptop

Our Mission

Our founders Josh and Jose set up Smartgrade in 2020 to tackle the thorny issue of assessment reliability.

The longer they worked in education, the more they worried about the reliability of assessments used by schools. Most school assessments are not standardised, which makes it hard to glean accurate insights about a student's level in any given subject. Too often that undermines the value of summative assessments to the great frustration of school teachers, leaders and administrators.

Smartgrade was designed to bring smarter standardised assessments to the sector. Working with well-regarded partners such as White Rose Education and Ark, we've designed a platform that helps schools, MATs and partners to collaborate and standardise assessments.

Our guiding principles

Smartgrade has opinions about what good assessments look like, and we are proud to work with thousands of schools and MATs that share our values.

Assessment quality matters

We work with our assessment partners and MATs to help them iteratively improve their assessments.

Choose your own assessments

To assess effectively we need to understand what we were trying to teach in the first place. If your assessment approach does not align with your curriculum, then it’ll struggle to give you actionable information.

We reduce teacher workload wherever we can

When we design our products, we think about teacher workload at each step. Our online markbooks are super simple to use, and our online assessments allow students to enter their results directly into Smartgrade, reducing marking.

Analysis should drive decision-making

We want every report in Smartgrade to lead to action. It’s easy to get caught up in creating endless reports that look pretty but lack a clear purpose. So we make sure Smartgrade analysis reports are always clear, show national context wherever possible, and lead to simplified decision-making for school leaders.

We believe in the power of standardisation

If you’re using unbenchmarked assessments, it’s hard to know what good looks like. That’s why assessments on our platform contextualise performance using a MAT or national standardisation sample. This means that teachers and leaders get meaningful benchmarking data to help them understand performance and spot gaps in learning.

Our guiding principles

Smartgrade has opinions about what good assessment looks like, and we are proud to work with thousands of schools and MATs that share our values.

Curriculum comes first

To assess effectively we need to understand what we were trying to teach in the first place. If your assessment approach does not align with your curriculum, then it’ll struggle to give you actionable information.

Assessment quality matters

We work with our assessment partners and MATs to help them iteratively improve their assessments.

We reduce teacher workload wherever we can

When we design our products, we think about teacher workload at each step. Our online markbooks are super simple to use, and our online assessments allow students to enter their results directly into Smartgrade, reducing marking.

Analysis should drive decision-making

We want every report in Smartgrade to lead to action. It’s easy to get caught up in creating endless reports that look pretty but lack a clear purpose. So we make sure Smartgrade analysis reports are always clear, show national context wherever possible, and lead to simplified decision-making for school leaders.

We believe in the power of standardisation

If you’re using unbenchmarked assessments, it’s hard to know what good looks like. That’s why assessments on our platform contextualise performance using a MAT or national standardisation sample. This means that teachers and leaders get meaningful benchmarking data to help them understand performance and spot gaps in learning.

How we standardise assessments

Smartgrade uses “live” standardisations, meaning the standardisation sample is always composed of students sitting the same assessments at the same point in time. This differs from traditional standardised assessment providers, who typically run a standardisation exercise and then use these results as a reference for any student taking that same test in the future.

We only ever compare students to their peers of the same age at the same point in time.
It allows for tests to be changed/ improved between years.
We can account and adjust benchmarks for national external factors like COVID.
It means we can use assessments from partners who have created tests to align with their curriculum.

Meet the Smartgrade team

Smartgrade is brought to you by...
Jose Diaz
Co-founder

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Joshua Perry
Co-founder

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Rachel Gray
Head of Client Services

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David Collins
Head of Growth

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Ryan Nash
Customer Success Manager

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Emily Sandford
Customer Support Associate

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Alejandro Hernandez
Lead Developer

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Alvaro Delgado
Developer

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Sergi Heras
Developer

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Charlene Pilkington
Marketing Executive

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Joshua 'JP' Perry
Customer Support Associate

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Jack Gray
Support Associate

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Chris Smith
Head of Product

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Kai Sells
Product Owner

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Jessica Murray
Marketing Manager

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Romen Medina
Developer

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Adrian Galvez
Tester

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Elena Castro
Developer

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Jose Maria Aguilera
Developer

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