How Bandwise AI works

Last updated 30 September 2026

Bandwise AI helps you mark your students’ English exam practice. It drafts; you decide. This page explains what it does, where it can go wrong, and what you should check before a student sees a mark.

What it does

• Transcribes handwriting from photos and PDFs of essays, keeping the student’s own spelling and grammar, so you can check the text against the original.
• Marks Writing and Speaking against the exam’s official band descriptors or rating scales: a score for each criterion, evidence quoted from the student’s work, and a next step. Speaking is marked from the recording itself, not only from a transcript.
• Compares an essay with a student’s class writing, only when you ask: specific differences from the writing they did in class under supervision, and questions you could ask them about the essay.

Reading, Listening and Use of English are not marked by AI: their results come straight from the raw score you enter.

What it doesn’t do

• It doesn’t give official results. Every score is a practice estimate. Real examiners, test versions and conditions differ.
• It doesn’t decide anything about a student. Nothing reaches a student unless you choose to share it, and a mark is a draft until you review it.
• It doesn’t detect AI or cheating. No tool can do that reliably, and detectors often flag learners of English wrongly. A comparison with class writing shows differences to talk about; it never says who wrote the work. Don’t use it on its own to accuse, mark down or penalise a student.
• It doesn’t judge accents, emotions or personality. Speaking is marked on the exam’s criteria only. An accent is never a fault in itself.

How it works

When you ask for a transcription, an assessment or a comparison, Bandwise sends the work needed for it, with the task prompt and the official rating scale, to a large language model run for Bandwise by a major cloud AI provider. Instructions written for each exam tell it how to apply the scale the way a trained examiner does, and to write feedback in plain English for the student. We don’t use your students’ work to train AI models. Where the work goes, how the provider may use it and how it is protected are in our Privacy Policy.

How accurate it is

We check Bandwise AI against scripts marked by examiners, from the exam boards’ own handbooks and sample materials, for every exam before it goes live, and we track how much teachers change its marks after review. On average its marks are close to the examiners’, but on any single piece of work it can be a band or a few marks out, in either direction. It is less reliable when:

• the handwriting is hard to read, or the transcription wasn’t checked;
• the response is very short, off-task, or copies the prompt;
• the recording is noisy, quiet or cut off, or, in a paired test, it isn’t clear which voice is your student;
• the task prompt or chart the student answered is missing.

Your part: checking before students see it

1. Check the transcription against the original work and tick that you checked it. Bandwise won’t mark an essay until you do.
2. Read each score and its evidence. Change any score or wording you disagree with; your marks replace the AI’s, and the AI’s original estimate stays visible to you for comparison.
3. Mark it reviewed when you’re happy. Progress emails include reviewed work only, and reports say whether the feedback was drafted with AI and reviewed by you.
4. Talk it through. The feedback is written for students, but a conversation with you is what makes it useful.

Telling your students

Let your students (and, for children, their parents or guardians) know that you use Bandwise AI to help mark their practice work and that you check every mark. If you use class writing profiles or comparisons, tell them their class writing may be used that way. For example: “I use an AI tool to draft marks and feedback on your practice work. I read and check everything before you get it, and the final mark is mine.”

Credits

Bandwise AI comes with a monthly allowance of credits: a writing assessment uses 1, a speaking test 3, marking an essay’s mistakes 1 more, suggesting better wording 1 more, and comparing an essay with a student’s class writing 1 more. Re-running the same piece in the same month is free. You can see what’s left under Settings → AI usage.

Problems

If a mark looks badly wrong, use Report a problem in the studio. Reports go straight to us and help us improve Bandwise AI for everyone.

Questions? Email hello@bandwiseapp.com.