Apply the Same Criteria to All Twenty-Two Pieces of Coursework
In IB, your marking gets checked. Internal assessment is marked by you and moderated by the organisation, so the question is not just whether a band is right — it is whether you applied it the same way to the first script and the twenty-second. GradingPal holds every draft against the criteria you work to, with the evidence attached. The mark that counts is still yours to award.
You approve every mark. GradingPal is not affiliated with or endorsed by the International Baccalaureate Organization.
Criteria in Bands, and Marks That Come From Two Places
IB subjects are assessed against named criteria, each marked in bands with a descriptor for every level rather than points for features present. The Middle Years Programme and the Diploma Programme structure those criteria differently, but the mechanic is the same. What is unusual is where the marks come from: some are awarded externally, and some are awarded by the teacher and then moderated by the organisation. The IB publishes the criteria for each subject; this page is about the coursework in between.
Everything on the Way to Something Else
Almost everything an IB teacher marks is a draft or a piece of practice heading toward an assessment someone else will see. That is where consistent criteria matter most and where the feedback is worth most.
- Internal assessment drafts
- Investigations, explorations, historical enquiries — before the mark you award
- Extended essay drafts
- Supervised, assessed externally
- Theory of knowledge essay drafts
- Argument and counter-argument, assessed externally
- Scientific investigations and lab work
- Criteria on analysis and evaluation
- Language A and B written tasks
- Across the languages a school teaches in
Tag Once. Every Grade After That Builds the Picture.
Set your subject’s criteria for the class once, at the start of the course. On any rubric, each criterion has a suggest action — GradingPal proposes the matching criteria and you accept or dismiss each one. Mark the work as usual. The evidence lands against the criterion, so it is not a checkbox but a list of the things students actually wrote. Across a course, that becomes a picture of where a cohort sits against each one.
What This Doesn’t Claim to Do
It does not replace your school’s reporting, and a teacher approves every mark before it counts.
It does not award internal assessment marks. That judgement is yours, it is the one the organisation moderates, and it should be made by the person who taught the course. It does not supply the IB’s official criteria as ready-made rubrics — you work to the criteria your subject uses and write the rubric your department works from, and GradingPal holds student work against your rows, in your wording. It does not predict a subject grade or a diploma point total: a draft mark is a draft mark. It does not detect whether a student used AI, and does not try to — that is an academic-integrity conversation between a school and its students, and a tool that claims to settle it is overstating what any tool can do. And GradingPal is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the International Baccalaureate Organization. Its programme names are its trademarks; we use them because that is what the courses are called.
Marking a Cohort the Same Way Is Harder Than Marking One Script Well
Moderation does not ask whether you were generous or harsh. It asks whether you were consistent — whether the band you gave the third script means the same thing as the band you gave the nineteenth. That is a genuinely hard thing to do across a weekend, and it is hard for reasons that have nothing to do with competence: the criteria live in your head by script five, and a descriptor read at nine in the morning is not the descriptor read at eleven at night.
GradingPal marks every piece against the same written criteria, in the same wording, in whatever order you upload them. When you look at criterion B across the cohort, you are looking at one standard applied twenty-two times — and every band has the passage it was awarded on sitting underneath it, so you can check the ones that look wrong rather than re-reading all of them.
That is also what you need when moderation comes back. A band with the evidence attached is a position you can explain; a band on its own is one you have to defend from memory, months later.
One Criterion, Twenty-Two Scripts, One Afternoon
- The criterion
- The one about evaluating the method — the department’s own wording of it, written once.
- The cohort
- Twenty-two internal assessment drafts, uploaded in whatever order they arrived.
- What comes back
- A band for each, and beneath every band the sentences it was awarded on.
- The view
- All twenty-two against that one criterion, side by side.
- What you do
- Read the four that sit at a boundary, adjust two, leave the rest.
You have still marked the cohort. You have just stopped marking it twenty-two separate times.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can GradingPal mark internal assessment?
It marks drafts and coursework on the way to it, against the criteria you work to. The internal assessment mark itself is yours to award — it is the one the organisation moderates, and it should come from the person who taught the course.
Does it come with the IB’s official criteria?
No. You write the rubric your department works from, in your wording, and GradingPal holds student work against your rows. Many departments word their rubrics to reflect the published criteria; that is your call to make and yours to phrase.
How does it help with moderation?
By making consistency easier to achieve and easier to explain. Every piece is marked against the same written criteria in the same wording, and each band has the passage it was awarded on attached — so you can check the ones near a boundary rather than re-reading a whole cohort. It makes no claim about moderation outcomes.
Does it work for MYP as well as the Diploma Programme?
Yes. Both are marked against named criteria in bands, and the mechanic is the same: write the criteria your subject uses, tag them, mark. Only the criteria change.
Can it tell me whether a student used AI to write a draft?
No, and it does not try to. That is an academic-integrity conversation between a school and its students, and we would be wary of any tool claiming to settle it. What GradingPal does is judge the work in front of it against your criteria.
Is GradingPal affiliated with the IB?
No. GradingPal is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the International Baccalaureate Organization. Its programme names are its trademarks, and we use them because that is what the courses are called.
Grade One Assignment Free
Write your criteria once, upload a set of drafts, and look at one criterion across the whole cohort.