Make It Official
GradingPal usually arrives in a school one teacher at a time, and by the time anyone asks the question you are asking, a department is already using it. This page is for deciding whether that should be sanctioned, funded and extended — starting with the documents your approval process will want.
You’re Not Evaluating This From Scratch
Almost nobody arrives here cold. Someone in English started using it in October, it spread down the corridor, and now there is a question about whether the school should be paying for it, whether anyone has checked the data handling, and whether the marks it produces would survive a parent asking. Those are the right three questions and they are the only three this page answers.
Everything Your Approval Process Will Ask For
Written to be forwarded rather than read aloud, covering what your data protection officer, your IT lead and your leadership team each need — and it does not require a call first. Tell us what your process needs and we will send it across.
- The data processing agreement your district or trust can sign
- Where student data is processed and stored, and who else touches it
- Our position on student work and AI training
- What the AI does, what it proposes, and what it never decides
- The record kept of every settings change and every teacher override
- How accounts, classes and co-teachers work in practice
If your process needs something that isn’t in it, say so on the form and we will tell you honestly whether we have it. There is also everything in the packet, in detail.
A Department Writes the Rubric Once
The thing that changes when a whole department uses this is not speed — it is that four people stop marking the same task four different ways. A rubric built once can be shared across the school, colleagues can pick it up without anyone provisioning anything, and co-teachers share a class on equal footing rather than one owning it and one watching. One rubric, a whole department is the smallest unit of adoption that produces something a leader can see.
“How Do You Know This Student Is at Approaching?”
If your school is moving toward standards-based grading, that question has always been answerable in principle and expensive in practice — it meant digging through folders. Here it is one click: every mastery result opens onto the graded work that produced it. The calculation itself is deterministic rather than AI-generated, so the number is reproducible; every teacher override is recorded with who, when and why; and the answer to “how do you know” is a screen rather than a search.
Which is also the answer when a parent asks it, three months later, about one grade.
What We Don’t Do
We are not your gradebook of record and are not trying to be — final grades live where your school has always kept them. We integrate with Google Classroom and not with Canvas or Schoology, which for some districts is the end of the conversation and we would rather you know now — all our integrations. And we do not detect AI-written work, which is usually the first thing a leadership team asks and always the same answer: what the AI is not asked to decide.
What we do not ask you to do is run a rollout. Nothing here needs provisioning, seat assignment or a training day.
How Schools Actually Start
- 01
One teacher
Already happened, probably last term, and nobody asked you. This is how every school we work with started.
- 02
One department
A shared rubric, colleagues marking the same task the same way, and the first thing you can actually look at as a leader.
- 03
The school
The approval packet through your process, an agreement signed, and the people already using it doing so with the school’s backing rather than around it.
Presenting this to your department? There is a ready-to-present slide deck you can use as it is or take apart — written for a staff meeting rather than a sales pitch.
Book a Demo, or Don’t
A demo is thirty minutes with someone who will show you the mastery view with real graded work behind it and answer procurement questions on the call. It is not a prerequisite: the packet comes without one, and the free plan needs no conversation with us at all.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have a data processing agreement we can sign?
Yes, and it comes in the approval packet along with where student data is processed and stored, who else touches it, and our position on student work and AI training. Request it from this page without booking a call.
Will our students’ work be used to train anyone’s AI?
No. That is set out in writing in the packet, in language your data protection officer can take to your board, and it is the answer whichever plan a teacher is on.
Can we see how a grade was reached if it’s challenged?
Yes. Every suggested score carries its reasoning and a quote from the student’s own work, every mastery result opens onto the graded work behind it, and every teacher override is recorded with who changed it, when and why.
Does it replace our gradebook or MIS?
No, and it is not designed to. Final grades stay in your school’s system of record. GradingPal is where the marking happens and where the evidence behind it is kept.
Do we need to roll it out, or train staff?
No. There is nothing to provision and no seats to assign — teachers sign up and use it, and a department can share rubrics without anyone administering the process.