How Assignment Packs Work

What is an Assignment Pack?

An assignment pack is a complete exam paper you build inside Top Marks. It looks like a real exam paper - questions laid out clearly, marks listed, and lined answer sheets for students to write on. You build it and print it, students complete it, you scan it, and upload it. The system automatically identifies which response belongs to which question and which student.

If your students have already sat the paper, you can still mark their scripts retrospectively. The Exam Decoder handles papers that weren’t downloaded via Top Marks - that is, the original papers or your own. It doesn't need QR codes, because it reads the PDF you upload and intelligently splits it by student and question. It's covered in full further down this article.

Schools have used assignment packs to mark 250+ mock exam papers in a single upload, with every single student receiving detailed feedback for every single question answered.

When to Use an Assignment Pack vs a Standalone Tool

Use a standalone tool when you're marking a single question.

Use an assignment pack when:

• You're running a full mock exam
• You want to mark multiple questions at once
• You want everything submitted and marked in a single workflow

Choosing your route: Build & Print or Exam Decoder

Go to Tools → Assignment Packs → Create Assignment Pack. The first thing you'll be asked is How are you using this pack?

Build & print on Top Marks - create a paper to print, hand out, then re-upload for marking. This route uses the QR code system to identify responses.

Exam Decoder - mark responses to a paper your students have already sat, or to any paper you'd rather use instead of building one here. This route doesn't use QR codes. Instead, our AI reads the scans and splits them by student and question.

Pick the route that matches what you're doing, then follow the relevant section below.

 

Route 1: Build & Print on Top Marks

Step 1: Give your pack a name

Step 2: Add your tools

Select the qualification, subject, and exam board.

You'll see a list of available tools based on your selection. One at a time, select the ones you want to include. For each question, enter the context - the question title, any extract, and any other details students were responding to. You can adjust the font style too, to make it look exactly as you want it.

If you'd rather not add questions one at a time, choose Import from exam paper instead. Upload a clean copy of the question paper as a PDF and the system will match the questions to Top Marks marking tools for you, ready for you to confirm or edit. This is available on both routes, and is covered in more detail in Step 3 of the Exam Decoder section below.

You can also choose how many lined answer sheets to include per question. If students are using their own paper, set this to zero. You can also mix and match Top Marks lined paper and your own, if students write lengthy essays - simply scan the mix of paper in the correct order.

Top Top: You're not limited to replicating a real exam paper. You can build entirely bespoke papers - different question combinations, repeated questions for practice, or structures that don't match any published paper.

Step 3: Select which questions to AI mark

You can choose which questions you want the AI to mark. If your pack contains six questions but you only want AI feedback on two, simply deselect the others.

Note: if you wish to apply a moderation rule,you can do so here using the moderation drop down. Simply select a saved rule from a previous moderation session that applies to the tool and the platform will mark to that rule from the outset, meaning you won't need to run a moderation session for the same rule twice.

Step 4: Add a cover page (optional)

You will then have the option to add a cover page to your paper, to enable you to create a complete replica of a paper so it feels as real as possible for your students.

You can do things like:

• Add your school's logo
• Give your paper a name
• Edit exam instructions (default instructions will automatically apply)

Step 5: Add your students

Add the students who will be sitting the paper. This gives the AI the information it needs to tag feedback to the correct individual once work has been marked. You can add students by class, year group or name.

Step 6: Share the pack (optional)

This step allows you to share the built assignment pack with teachers. This is especially helpful if one individual is building the packs to be distributed to the teachers or staff responsible for collecting/uploading student work.

The assignment pack will be visible to those teachers or staff members, and they will be able to upload student work to the pack for marking.

Note: This differs from the split function, which is explained later in the article.

Step 7: Print and distribute

Once your pack is built, download and print it. The system generates a complete paper ready to hand to students.

 

Step 8: Scan and upload

After students have completed the paper, scan all responses (with QR codes attached) into a single PDF and upload. The system handles the rest.

 

 

Route 2: The Exam Decoder

Use the Exam Decoder when you're marking a paper retrospectively, after your students have already sat it, or when you'd rather use your own paper than build and print one here. There are no QR codes involved. You tell us which questions the students sat and then our AI reads the scanned responses and works out which piece of writing belongs to which student and which question.

You build the pack in much the same way as you would on the build and print route, including how you add your tools. The real difference comes after you upload the student work: because there are no QR codes to read, there's an extra mapping stage where you check the system has matched each answer to the right student and question before anything is marked.

Step 1: Create the pack and choose Exam Decoder

Go to Tools → Assignment Packs → Create Assignment Pack, and select Exam Decoder on the How are you using this pack? screen.

Step 2: Give your pack a name

The pack then moves through five steps: Name, Tools, Marking Settings, Students and Share. There is no cover page step on this route, as you already have the paper.

Step 3: Add your tools, or import them from the exam paper

On the Tools step you can add your tools one at a time by selecting the qualification, subject, exam board and tool, exactly as you would on the build and print route. If you already have the paper to hand, it's usually quicker to choose Import from exam paper and let the system match the questions for you.

You'll be asked for the qualification, subject and exam board the paper belongs to, so the questions can be matched against the right marking tools. Then upload the question paper as a PDF and click Extract questions.

Upload a clean question paper, not a scan of student answers. A blank paper with no student responses on it gives the system the best chance of matching every question correctly. Extraction usually takes around half a minute.

Step 4: Check and edit the identified tools

Once the questions have been extracted, each one appears as a Top Marks marking tool that you can confirm or edit. You can amend the essay title, the extract and the extract source (typed text or an uploaded image), and choose whether the extract appears on the student's question page.

Set the number of answer sheets to 0 for each question. Students have already written their responses on their own paper, so there's no lined paper to generate.

It's worth reading through the extracted questions before moving on. If a question hasn't been matched, or has been matched to the wrong tool, this is the point to fix it.

Step 5: Adjust your marking settings

The Marking Settings step lists every tool in the pack. For each one you can choose whether it's AI marked, set the weighting on a harsh-to-lenient scale, and apply a moderation rule using the Select moderation session dropdown.

As with the build and print route, selecting a saved moderation rule means the platform marks to that rule from the outset, so you don't need to run the same moderation session twice.

Step 6: Add your students

Add every student who sat the paper, by class, year group or name. The Exam Decoder matches the names it reads on the scans against this list, so anyone missing here can't be matched.

Step 7: Share the pack (optional), then create it

Share works exactly as it does on the build and print route. Once you finish, the pack appears in your Assignment Packs list.

Step 8: Turn on Map answers

Download the pack from the Assignment Packs list. The Map answers toggle then appears against the pack in that list.

Switch Map answers on. This tells the system there will be no QR codes on the responses you're about to upload, and that it should use the Exam Decoder to identify them instead.

Step 9: Prepare and scan the student responses

The Exam Decoder works best when the scans give it clear signals to read. Before you scan:

• Each student's name should be clearly written on at least the first page of their responses
• Questions should be labelled on the page (Q1, Q2, Q3 and so on)
• Scan the full set of responses into a single PDF, keeping each student's pages together

Step 10: Upload and start mapping

Click Upload against the pack to open the Map scanned answers window. Add your scanned PDF, choose a folder if you want the pack filed somewhere in particular, and tick Receive email notifications if you'd like to be told when mapping has finished. Then select Start mapping. The pack status changes to Mapping while the system works through the responses. Once it finishes, the status changes to Mapped and a Review button appears.

Step 11: Review the mapping

Click Review to open the Match scanned answers screen. This is your chance to check the system has attributed every piece of writing to the right student and the right question before anything is marked.

The screen has three panels:

On the left, a coverage summary showing how many answers have been matched, how many are unassigned, and how many students are marked absent, followed by a searchable list of every student and their questions with page references. Use the filter box to jump to a particular student.

In the middle, the transcription of the selected answer, with dropdowns showing which student and which question it has been attributed to. You can edit the transcribed text directly here.

On the right, the scanned PDF with translucent coloured boxes drawn over it, each labelled with the student and question it belongs to.

A few things you can do from here:

• Reattribute an answer - use the Student and Question dropdowns to move a box to the right student or question
• Change what's captured - resize a box on the PDF to expand or reduce the text selected for that answer
• Delete a box - use the red cross on the box, or the Delete box button
• Draw a new box - switch the toggle above the PDF from Whole PDF to Draw box, then draw over the part of the page you want to allocate. A new box starts as unassigned, so set the student and question from the dropdowns
• Start over - if the mapping has gone badly wrong, Start over lets you begin again rather than correcting box by box

Note: you can freely edit the transcribed text, but editing the bounding box on the PDF afterwards can undo those edits. Get the boxes right first, then tidy up the text.

Step 12: Send for marking

Aim to get the unassigned count to zero and the coverage count complete before you go any further. When you're happy, click Ready to mark. Feedback appears in the My Feedback area as it comes through, exactly as it does for any other assignment pack.

 

The Split Function

This functionality allows you to split the assignment pack up by teacher/class. Although similar to the 'share' step detailed above, this feature differs as it allows you to split up the workload by class, meaning that each 'group' is responsible for uploading a portion of the student work.

Simply navigate to the Assignment Pack area, and click the three horizontal dots on the far right next to the relevant pack, and select 'Split'.

From there, you can type in and select the first teacher and corresponding class, and click 'Add Group' each time you wish to add another teacher/class to the split.

 

The result of this is that for each created 'group', the specified teacher will be responsible for uploading work for their class.

This is especially useful for larger cohorts, where you may not want one individual teacher to be responsible for uploading 250+ papers.

The Reset Function

If you need to upload further student responses to a pack that has already been marked, for example if some students sat the paper late or you're scanning a class in stages, you can do this with the Reset option.

First, make sure everything you've already submitted has fully finished marking. Then click the arrow drop-down next to the Assignment Pack and select Reset. This clears the pack of its uploaded files so you can add the next batch, and any feedback already produced stays in My Feedback.

Note: please don't reset a pack while marking is still in progress, including after transcription has finished but before marking has. Doing so will clear the transcriptions currently loaded into the pack, and those scripts may need to be uploaded again.

Top tip: if you're unsure whether a batch has finished, you can check its progress under Tools → My Ongoing Marking before resetting.

Multiple Choice Questions

Multiple choice questions are available within assignment packs and standalone tools. When adding a question, look for the toggle to switch to multiple choice mode.

Still unsure? The support chat in the bottom-right corner of the website connects you directly to a real person on the Top Marks team – not an AI bot, ironically! Don't hesitate to reach out at any point.