Trust to decide winners in AI assessment technology

ECI Partners said trust will determine which e-assessment and education technology providers succeed as artificial intelligence becomes more widely used across the sector. The investment firm made the case as it pointed to its backing of Paragin Group, a digital assessment software provider in the Benelux market.

Rory Nath, Partner at ECI Partners, said the spread of AI tools in assessment has made reliability, transparency and subject expertise more important than access to the latest models. He argued that AI features are becoming harder to differentiate because many suppliers rely on the same large language models.

The shift comes as education groups use AI to generate assessment content, mark work, monitor exams, and support learners and teachers. At the same time, students have broad access to AI tools, increasing scrutiny of exam integrity and how qualifications are assessed.

Nath said the core issue for awarding bodies and assessment providers is confidence in outcomes. In high-stakes settings, results can determine whether a candidate qualifies for a profession, leaving little room for error when exams are taken at scale.

Shared models

Many edtech suppliers now offer AI-led tools for question generation, automated marking, feedback, and detecting suspicious behaviour during exams, Nath said. But those functions are often built on underlying models that competitors can also license, weakening any lasting edge based on AI alone.

Instead, he pointed to specialist knowledge, proprietary content, and a close understanding of education workflows as the basis for stronger market positions. He cited Risr, a UK medical education provider, and its work with the Royal College of General Practitioners on an AI-based patient and coaching system for trainee GPs preparing for clinical assessments.

According to Nath, the value in that case comes from the clinical knowledge and assessment content behind the system rather than from AI in isolation. He made the same argument for the wider education technology market, where sector depth can matter more than access to a model.

Paragin was presented as another example of that approach. The company has spent more than 20 years working with schools, awarding organisations, and governments, and ECI said that experience has helped shape one of the more extensive assessment platforms in its market.

Nath said AI is helping product development at Paragin, but product direction still depends on detailed knowledge of assessment practice and customer needs. He added that this level of customer understanding was a major factor in ECI's investment decision.

Paragin Group Chief Executive Officer Jeroen Bakker set out a similar view on the use of AI in assessment software.

"I think AI needs to find a place in the software layer that adds real value to end users. Valuable use of AI arises when it actually helps in developing and assessing knowledge and competencies, rather than merely adding AI for AI's sake. Reliability, transparency and explainability are essential: it would be very bad for an assessment to be inexplicable or to unintentionally differ per student, or for the result to be slightly different tomorrow than today, because the LLM received an update last night," Bakker said.

Compliance pressure

The debate is also being shaped by regulation and governance demands. Assessment systems handle sensitive personal data, while exam results can influence access to professions such as medicine, accountancy, and engineering.

Nath said that means security, privacy, and fairness must be built into product design from the outset. He pointed to rules under the EU AI Act, where AI used in educational assessment and candidate monitoring is classified as high risk and subject to governance, human oversight, and fairness requirements.

He argued that those regulatory pressures could favour providers with the scale and resources to invest in compliance and security over long periods. In turn, that may increase pressure on smaller players that struggle to meet rising standards on their own.

That dynamic could drive further consolidation across education technology and e-assessment, particularly where buyers such as schools, universities, employers, and professional bodies place more weight on trusted systems than on speed of feature launches.

Bakker said the challenge is not simply whether AI can be added to a platform, but whether it can be controlled and trusted in a high-stakes environment.

"It is easy to add AI and feel you have found a solution, but does it really do what we want it to do, and do we have the right guardrails in place to control what goes in and what comes out? Those questions guide our approach at Paragin and we are very considered in how we think about AI, so that we continue to invest and innovate in a way that actually delivers value to our users," he said.