How it works
AI grading for handwritten answer sheets
Classi reads scanned handwritten student papers, grades them against the rubric a teacher already uses, writes feedback for each student, and hands the whole thing back for the teacher to review. A set of papers that would take a weekend takes minutes.
Can AI actually grade handwriting?
This is the question that decides whether a grading tool is useful in a school where students still write on paper. For Classi it is the primary case, not an afterthought: the platform was built around scanned handwritten answer sheets.
Handwritten work is harder than typed work for three reasons, and each one is handled separately. Handwriting varies enormously between students. Answers are not confined to neat text — students draw diagrams, annotate them, show working, cross things out and continue in the margin. And a scanned paper arrives as an undifferentiated image, with no marker showing where one answer ends and the next begins.
Classi splits the scan into individual responses and matches each one to the question it answers, extracts figures and diagrams alongside the text so that visual working is graded rather than ignored, and then assesses the response as a whole.
The process, step by step
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The teacher uploads the question paper
Classi extracts each question, its mark allocation, and the marking scheme, so the assignment structure is known before any student work arrives.
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Student papers are uploaded in bulk
Scans or photos of handwritten answer sheets are matched to the right student and the right question.
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The handwriting is read
Text, diagrams, figures and visual working are all extracted from the page.
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Each answer is graded against the rubric
Marks are awarded against the teacher's own marking points, applied identically to the first paper and the last.
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The teacher reviews
Marks and feedback are proposed, not published. The teacher checks, adjusts, and releases.
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Insights are generated
Per-question and per-student analytics show where the class actually struggled.
Grading by hand, and with Classi
Grading speed
Weeks of evenings and weekends
Minutes, not hours
Feedback quality
Brief marks, limited comments
Personalised, detailed feedback per student
Performance insights
Gut feeling, manual spreadsheets
Instant analytics across every student
Consistency
Varies by fatigue and mood
Rubric-aligned, every single time
Scalability
More students means more overtime
Grade 30 or 300 — same effort
Which boards and curricula does this work with?
Classi grades against the rubric the teacher supplies, not against a fixed answer key baked into the product. That makes it board-agnostic: the same mechanism works for CBSE, ICSE, IB, Cambridge, state boards and a school's own internal assessments, because in every case the standard being applied is the school's own marking scheme.
It also means the tool does not need to be re-certified when a curriculum changes. If the marking scheme changes, the grading changes with it.
The teacher stays in control
Classi produces proposed marks and proposed feedback. Nothing reaches a student until a teacher has reviewed it. The review screen shows the original handwritten answer alongside the marking points awarded or withheld, so a teacher can see why a mark was given and override it in one click.
More than the marks
Every graded assignment feeds a per-question and per-student view of the class. Instead of a spreadsheet of totals, teachers see which concepts a class has not understood, which students are struggling with which topics, and how that has moved since the last assessment.
Don't just take our word for it
“Classi is not just a tool, but a true friend to educators — with the potential to be a genuine game-changer.”
“Now that I’ve used Classi, I don’t want to live without it!”
See it on your own papers
The fastest way to judge a grading tool is to give it a set of papers you have already marked, and compare.