OfS: AI makes grading UK coursework 'close to impossible'

England's higher-education regulator says artificial intelligence has made grading unsupervised coursework "close to impossible," and warned that universities failing to design reliable assessments could face sanctions, the Guardian reported.

The finding sits in "Making AI Work for Students," a joint report published on 11 November by the Office for Students and Advance HE, drawing on a four-month investigation of roughly 300 students and staff across more than 120 institutions. It cites student AI use for assessments of 94 per cent in late 2025, up from 53 per cent in late 2023, and notes that AI-detection tools do not consistently and reliably identify AI use.

Josh Fleming, the OfS's director of strategy and delivery, called it a "generational risk to the system as it stands, threatening to undermine students' learning and institutions' ability to assess them," and demanded "far greater use of AI-free assessment."

Students in the research reported peers finishing work with large language models in minutes while receiving similar grades to those who had not used AI. The OfS says it will hold universities to account through its regulatory levers, which include conditions, penalties and funding suspension. Secure in-person formats are its proposed baseline, though controlled AI use in redesigned assignments remains on the table. Two of the researchers we follow in our Who's Who directory flagged the piece on the day it ran.

Advance HE said it will launch an AI-focused Change Academy in early 2027 to work with sector leaders on assessment redesign.