Custom Learning Objectives

Tailor AI Marking to Your School's Curriculum

The Custom Objectives feature in Assess and Teach lets UK teachers define their own learning objectives so AI marking matches exactly what is being taught in the classroom. Whether your school follows a bespoke writing progression, a published scheme of work, or topic-specific success criteria, you can add objectives once and reuse them across every assessment for every pupil.

Objectives can be typed in manually, pasted from an existing planning document, or imported in bulk from a CSV or Excel spreadsheet. The importer accepts flexible column headers — you simply map your existing data to year group, subject, genre, and category, and Assess and Teach handles the rest. There is no limit on the number of custom objectives you can create.

How Custom Objectives Improve Assessment

When you assess a piece of work, your custom objectives appear alongside the National Curriculum statements, so the AI evaluates the work against the criteria that matter to your team. This is particularly useful for schools using progression frameworks like Pie Corbett's Talk for Writing, NFER assessment grids, or in-house writing ladders. Reception teachers can map objectives to Early Learning Goals, while KS3 and KS4 teachers can align with subject-specific GCSE descriptors.

Each objective can be tagged by year group, subject, and genre — meaning the right criteria automatically appear in the relevant assessment. For example, a Year 4 narrative writing objective will show up only when you mark a Year 4 narrative piece, keeping the interface focused and the marking accurate.

Bulk Import from CSV or Excel

Most schools already have learning objectives stored in spreadsheets, planning documents, or curriculum maps. Rather than re-typing them, the Custom Objectives importer reads CSV, XLS, and XLSX files in seconds. Headers are auto-detected and mapped to the correct fields, and you can review every row before saving. Mistakes are easy to fix because each objective remains editable after import.

For larger trusts and federations, a single curriculum lead can build the objective set and share it with their team using school accounts. This ensures every teacher across the school assesses against the same standards, supporting moderation and consistency.

Get Started

Custom Objectives are included in the Pro plan. View pricing to start a free trial, or sign in to add objectives to your existing account. Want to see the full marking workflow first? Try a free assessment or read our guide to assessing writing in KS2. For more teacher resources, visit our resources hub.