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Education

The Supervised Page

Generative AI can write a coursework essay no marker can prove isn’t the candidate’s own, so exam regulators are moving written work back under supervision.

What is it?

Exam regulators are pulling written assessment back under watch because AI can produce an essay nobody can disprove. England’s regulator demands tighter authentication and keeps scrapping coursework open, while exam rules now treat smart glasses like phones and bar AI tools from the room.

Why now?

In March 2026 Ofqual asked exam boards for immediate steps against AI in coursework. By July it promised far more scrutiny of written work. The College Board banned smart glasses at the SAT that March, and the JCQ rules for 2026 to 2027 followed.

Who’s building it?

Exam regulators, awarding bodies, test owners, exam centres and the universities redesigning their own assessment.

OfqualJCQCollege BoardExam boardsUCL Law
The full read
Why now, who is building it, where the market goes, and what stays unsettled.
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01 · The market
Who’s in it
Builders — exam boards redesigning how coursework is authenticated and checked.
Buyers — students and schools who must now prove the work happened in view.
Gatekeepers — Ofqual, the JCQ rules and the College Board test rules.
What’s at stake
Whether written coursework stays in qualifications at all, or survives only as work made under a teacher’s eye.
Whether a grade still certifies who did the work.
Whether wearable AI is treated as a phone.
What’s unsettled
How the exam boards answered Ofqual’s March letter, which stays unpublished.
How many AI cases go undetected behind the low counts.
Whether checkpoints and footnotes can authenticate work, or only slow down the cheating.
02 · How the demand matureda progression, not a timeline
Novelty
AI essays appear in coursework, and detected cases stay relatively low so far.
Retention
Regulators ask boards for authentication steps, and universities move law assessment in person.
Willingness to pay
Schools accept more checkpoints and teacher time to keep coursework worth something to universities.
Category
Supervision becomes the condition for any written grade that carries real weight.
03 · Where the market goesthe forks, not a prediction
→The supervised middle: coursework survives, but drafted in class across checkpoints, with a teacher signing off each stage of the work.
→Coursework is scrapped in some subjects, and the timed exam carries the whole written grade.
→Authentication fails quietly, and grades from unsupervised written work lose their standing with universities and employers.
→Wearable AI outpaces the rules, and exam rooms add device checks at the door.
The forks turn on whether watching a student write can be made cheap enough to keep, or whether the timed exam takes back the whole grade.
04 · The Assessment deskadjacent market, moving now
The Detector Doubt
A detector score loses force as proof.
A court annulled a finding built on a Turnitin AI score.
NY Supreme Court (FindLaw)
The Human Mark
A state bars AI as the main grader.
Oklahoma’s Senate passed its AI-in-schools bill 42-0.
Oklahoma Senate
Attention, Legislated
Lawmakers limit children’s screens and social media access.
Massachusetts House passed, 129-25, a bill banning school-day cellphones.
GBH News
05 · The Wire
01
England’s regulator asked boards for immediate action against AI misuse.
Ofqual ↗
02
Ofqual’s regulator says scrapping coursework stays on the table.
Schools Week ↗
03
Coursework in reformed qualifications will face far, far more scrutiny.
Schools Week ↗
04
The College Board bans smart glasses at the SAT from March 2026.
Inside Higher Ed ↗
05
UK exam rules for 2026 to 2027 list smart glasses among banned devices and bar access to AI tools.
JCQ ↗
The panel on this signal
They agreed on
–Regulators are tightening supervision of written work, not abolishing coursework, and the decision on scrapping remains open.
–Detected AI cases are low; the undetected share worries regulators.
–Smart glasses now sit with phones on the banned list in the exam room.
The examinations officer disagreed on
–Every added checkpoint lands on centres already short of rooms and invigilators; supervision at scale is a staffing problem first.
Know more about the method →
✦How this signal was built
01 · Panel
A Delphi panel of 4 AI analysts, each reasoning independently.
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02 · Debate
They challenge and revise each other’s reads over two rounds.
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03 · Evidence
Every claim is tied to a cited, linked source on The Wire.
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04 · Synthesis
A moderator writes it into one read, disagreement and all.