Overview
After a written test the marks go into Test Results, and the scripts go home. What the student got wrong — which is the useful part — goes home with them. Answer Sheets keeps it: for every question, the marks, what went wrong, and the correction.
- Tell it the test: the batch, and what each question is worth.
- Add the scripts: photograph them one student at a time, or add the whole pile at once.
- Read them: the AI reader goes through each script.
- Check and approve each one. Nothing counts until you approve it.
- Send the marks to Test Results and publish when you're ready.
Two ways to use it
| I have already corrected them | Correct them for me | |
|---|---|---|
| The scripts | Marked by you, in pen | Unmarked |
| The marks | Read off each script exactly as you wrote them. Never changed, never filled in. | Proposed against your answer key, the way your board marks. You approve or change each one. |
| The mistakes | From your crosses, circles and notes, explained by the reader where you only put a cross | From the reader, one for every mark taken off |
| Best for | Keeping a record of marking you'd do anyway — the profile of each student is the point | Saving the evening you'd spend marking |
You choose when you create the set. It can't be switched once scripts in it have been read.
1. Tell it the test
Choose the batch that sat the test and give it a name. If you've already added the test in Test Results, pick it, and the marks will go there.
Then the questions. The reader matches each answer on a script to a question by its number, so each question needs a label (1, 2, 5(a)…) and its marks. Three ways in:
- Quick outline — “20 questions of 1 mark”, added in one go. Enough for a teacher-marked test.
- A paper you made in Question Paper — every question comes across with its marks, answer and topic. Questions with parts become 5(a) and 5(b), because that's how they're marked. In an “answer any four of seven” section, the questions are marked as choice questions, so leaving one out isn't a mistake.
- A photo or PDF of the printed paper — read the same way Question Paper imports one.
Two optional things make everything after it better. A topic on each question lets the student profile say where someone keeps slipping. An expected answer or marking points is what “Correct them for me” marks against; without it the reader marks from subject knowledge and says it is less sure.
For “Correct them for me”, pick the board: it decides how marks are given. CBSE credits any correct wording of a value point and never deducts for phrasing; ICSE takes marks off for missing working. These are the boards' own marking rules, the same ones the Practice Studio uses.
2. Add the scripts
The class list shows every active student in the batch. For each one, Add script opens your phone's camera or photo picker. Take each page in order; add more pages to a script any time. On a computer you can drop the files straight onto a student's row.
A PDF works too, including an office scanner's black-and-white “scan to PDF”. It is split into pages in your browser, so only the page images are sent.
iPhone photos are fine when you add them from the iPhone itself: it converts them as they upload. The same photos copied to a computer are HEIC files, which most computer browsers can't open. Add them from the phone, or set the iPhone to Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible.
Photos are shrunk on your device before they're sent (to about 2000 pixels on the long side — still sharp enough for handwriting), so forty scripts don't eat your data.
The whole pile at once
If you'd rather not tap forty names, add the whole pile at the top of the class list: photos in the order you took them, or one PDF from the office scanner. Then press Sort. The reader looks at each page for the student's name, roll number and whether it is the front of a script, and the pages are grouped into scripts and matched to your class list. It allows for initials (“Aarav S.”), spellings (“Arav”) and a surname written first.
Nothing is saved until you check it. Each proposed script shows its pages and the name that was written on it. Pick a different student, split a block where a new script starts, or merge it into the one above. Scripts with no readable name are left for you to assign. A student never gets two scripts from one pile.
Photos that read first time
- Flat on a table, in daylight or under a tube light, with no shadow of your phone across the page.
- The whole page in the frame, the right way up.
- Red and green ink read well. Pencil marks are harder: go over marks in pen if you can.
- Put the total and a table of question marks on the front page if that's your habit — the reader uses both.
3. Reading the scripts
Read N scripts reads every script that has pages, two at a time. You can start checking the first ones while the rest are read. A long script is read in parts of ten pages. If a script can't be read, it says so; try again, or mark it by hand.
In a teacher-marked set the reader is told, in so many words, that your marks are final: it reports the mark you wrote, exactly as written (“2½”, “1+1”, “3/5”). If it can't find or read a mark, the question is left without one for you to fill in; it never works out what the mark should have been. On a 1-mark question, a lone tick is read as 1 and a cross as 0, and is labelled “read from a tick or cross”.
4. Checking and approving
Each script opens with its pages on one side and the questions on the other. For each question you see:
- The mark, and where it came from: read from your script, suggested, or entered by you. Change it with the − and + buttons (half a mark at a time) or type it.
- What the student wrote, condensed. Click the page link to jump to it.
- Your words on the script, in red, as you wrote them.
- Each mistake: its kind, what went wrong, what the student wrote, and the correction — labelled as your correction when it came from your pen and suggested when the reader wrote it. Edit, remove or add mistakes freely.
Approve records the script. Approve and next takes you to the next script waiting. Saving a draft keeps your edits without counting them.
The checks
When a student asks CBSE to verify their marks, the board checks three things: that every answer was marked, that the total was added correctly, and that no question got more than it was worth. The same three run on every script here, before anything is saved:
| Check | What happens |
|---|---|
| An answer with no mark | You can't approve until it has one — 0 is a mark. |
| A mark above the question's maximum | You can't approve until it's fixed. In a teacher-marked set the mark is shown as written, not quietly lowered. |
| The total written on the script doesn't match the question marks | Shown in red. The total always follows the question marks, so approve, and correct the script before it goes home. The class report lists every script with this problem. |
| A mark that was hard to read | Flagged to double-check against the page. Doesn't block. |
| Marks lost with no mistake recorded | Flagged, so the profile isn't missing the reason. Doesn't block. |
Kinds of mistake
Every mistake is one of these. They group into five families, because the family says what to do about it:
| Family | Kinds | What helps |
|---|---|---|
| Understanding | Concept gap · Wrong method | Reteach the idea. More practice won't fix a wrong idea. |
| Memory | Wrong fact or formula | Revision and recall: flashcards, short spaced tests. |
| Care | Calculation slip · Misread the question | Checking habits, not another lesson. |
| Completeness and form | Incomplete · Presentation or units · Language | Show what a full-marks answer includes. |
| Left blank | Not attempted | Find out why: time, nerves, or not knowing where to start. |
5. Marks to Test Results
Send to Test Results first shows a preview: every student's total, what Test Results has for them now, and which marks would change. Nothing is written until you confirm.
- Only approved scripts are sent. Students without one keep whatever Test Results already has.
- Test Results holds whole marks, so a total like 38½ is rounded (to 39), and the rounding is noted in your private remark for that student. Your own remark there is kept.
- If you pick an existing test that is out of a different total, it's refused rather than scaled.
- The result arrives unpublished, as always. Publish it in Test Results when you're ready.
What students see
Nothing, until you publish the result. Then, on their Results page, the test has See your marked script and corrections: their marks for each question, your comments, each mistake with its correction, and the photographed pages. They never see the reader's own notes, and they can only open their own script.
Publishing also puts each question they lost marks on into their Error Book — the question, what they wrote and the correction — marked as a concept gap or a careless slip where the mistake says so, to revise like any other entry. Sending again later doesn't duplicate them.
The class report
Built from approved scripts only, so it is never a guess. It shows:
- Where the marks went: marks lost by family and by kind of mistake.
- Reteach first: questions where a third or more of the class had a concept gap or used a wrong method, with what they actually wrote.
- Question by question: the class average, full marks, blanks and the commonest mistake. Open a question to see each student's mistake and correction.
- By topic, if your questions have topics.
- Students, most marks lost to understanding first — the ones a reteach helps most.
- Totalling errors found on the scripts.
A student's profile
Open a student from the class list or the report to see every approved script of theirs in batches you teach: their score across tests and whether it's rising, how they lose marks, the mistakes that keep coming back (a kind of mistake in two or more tests is a habit, not a bad day), and every mistake with its correction.
Without the AI reader
Everything works without it. On a student's row, By hand opens their script with the questions blank: type the marks and note the mistakes from the paper script in front of you. The checks, the report, the profile, Test Results and the Error Book all work the same way. This is also how you record a student whose parent hasn't allowed AI marking.
Privacy
- Photos are stored privately, never at a public link. Only teachers of the batch can open them, and a student can open only their own, only after the result is published.
- To be read, a script's photos are sent to our AI provider directly from private storage. Where parental consent is being enforced, a student under 18 whose parent hasn't allowed “AI help” — which covers photos of work sent for AI marking — is never sent: their row says so and their script is marked by hand. A mixed pile can't be sorted by name in that batch, since sorting would send every page. See Data protection & parental consent.
- Deleting a set deletes its photos and every mistake recorded from it. Marks already sent to Test Results, and entries already in a student's Error Book, stay.
What it can't do
- The reader can misread handwriting — the student's or yours. That's why every mark shows where it came from, hard-to-read marks are flagged, and nothing counts until you approve it.
- It reads diagrams and working as well as a photo shows them; a faint pencil sketch may be missed.
- An answer written under a question number that isn't on your list is reported to you, not counted.
- A script can have up to 40 pages, and the pile up to 400 pages at a time.
Questions
Will it change my marks? No. In a teacher-marked set your marks are read, never corrected. If one is over the maximum or the total doesn't add up, it tells you; the fix is yours.
I edited the questions after approving scripts. Changing a topic or wording keeps the approvals. Adding or removing a question, or changing what one is worth, sends approved scripts back for review, because they no longer match what you approved.
Can a batch teacher use it? Yes, for the batches they are assigned to — and they see only those batches' scripts and profiles.
A page is in the wrong script. In the script, remove it or move it earlier or later. If it belongs to another student, remove it and add it on their row.