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.
Our Mission
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. We started by building a platform that helps schools, MATs, and partners collaborate and standardise their data. We work closely with well-regarded curriculum partners such as Ark Curriculum Plus, United Curriculum, and CUSP.
To further support schools and MATs, in 2026 we launched the Smartgrade Assessment Series (SAS). We recognised that traditional tests often use outdated standardisations and lack curriculum alignment, which leads to unreliable data. Designed to follow the schemes your school uses, SAS ensures students are never tested on content they haven’t yet covered. Combined with live standardisations, granular topic breakdowns, The Smartgrade Assessment Series delivers reliable assessments with accurate, actionable insights.
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.
We work with our assessment partners and MATs to help them iteratively improve their assessments.
An assessment only tells you something useful if it tests what you've actually taught. When the assessment and the curriculum don't match, the results are hard to act on. Smartgrade aligns with over 95% of the maths schemes used in UK schools, so you can pick papers that match what your pupils have covered.
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.
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.
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.
Meet the Smartgrade team
Standardising assessments from high quality curriculum partners
Smartgrade works with industry-leading assessment partners who make their assessments available through our platform. Access question, topic and national benchmarks for all of our partner assessments.
Bring your smarts to Smartgrade
1,500+ Schools & MATs trust Smartgrade with their assessments
