In Uganda, teachers face staggering workloads. With classes often exceeding 100 students and teacher-to-pupil ratios as high as 1:130, educators spend up to 75 hours manually grading hundreds of exam papers. This leaves little time for detailed feedback, forcing many to resort to generic scores instead of explanations. The consequences are stark: stagnant student performance, chronic teacher burnout, and national exam failure rates exceeding 40% in key subjects like math and science.
“After grading 100 papers, you’re too exhausted to write feedback,” laments a secondary school teacher. “Students just see a grade, not why they lost marks.” The issue extends beyond Uganda—as countries across Africa face similar struggles, where manual grading delays results and undermines learning outcomes.
So, what can be done? Technology is the answer. Technology’s rapid advancement has dramatically transformed how we live and work. Innovations have streamlined everyday tasks and boosted productivity, making life more convenient and efficient. And, one of those innovations is Mark AI, a startup in its early stages —is set to address one of education’s most persistent challenges: the exhausting, time-consuming process of grading exams.
Mark AI, a homegrown artificial intelligence startup, was born back when Tusiime Kenneth volunteered as a teacher in high school. Overwhelmed by workloads, missed deadlines, and burnout during exam periods, he often delegated grading to senior students—a stopgap solution that left him guilt-ridden. “I always wished there was a better way to grade students and provide feedback without sacrificing time,” Tusiime reflects. His co-founder, Deograsius Ssemakula’s parallel experiences cemented their resolve to build a scalable solution.
Mark AI leverages AI models to grade exams, generate bias-free feedback, and assign follow-up work—tasks that traditionally take teachers weeks—in minutes. The platform combines large language models (LLMs) and proprietary algorithms to analyze handwritten answers, images, and contextual responses with remarkable efficiency. It excels in speed —and according to Tusiime, it can grade 300 papers in under two minutes while delivering precise, personalized feedback—such as identifying specific errors (e.g., “Incorrect formula in Question 3”), and generating adaptive follow-up assignments tailored to individual student needs.
Studies show personalized feedback boosts academic performance by 20–30% and fosters student-teacher trust.
The tool integrates with systems like Google Classroom and Moodle, ensuring seamless adoption. By automating grading, Mark AI reclaims 50–80 hours per term for teachers—time they can reinvest in nurturing critical thinking and creativity.
Mark AI serves three distinct customer segments, each grappling with unique challenges in exam assessment.
- National examination bodies—These organizations invest heavily in hiring and accommodating teachers for labor-intensive, months-long grading processes.
- Educational institutions—With hundreds of students facing weeks-long grading delays, often leaving learners in limbo while teachers struggle to balance marking with instruction.
- Individual educators—Private tutors and professional teachers seeking tools to efficiently evaluate exams and provide actionable insights to foster student growth.
By addressing the scalability needs of large bodies, the efficiency gaps of schools, and the practical demands of individual educators, Mark AI positions itself as a versatile solution for transforming assessment workflows across the education ecosystem. The startup’s value proposition lies in its ability to merge speed with precision.
“Our goal is to become every teacher’s grading companion,” says Tusiime.
While rooted in Uganda, Mark AI’s implications are global. Similar grading crises plague classrooms worldwide, and Tusiime confirms they plan to scale beyond Uganda’s borders.
As Mark AI prepares for broader rollout, its founders envision a future where AI-driven tools are ubiquitous in classrooms—bridging the gap between overburdened educators and student potential. For Tusiime, the mission is personal: “We’re not just saving time; we’re nurturing futures.”
In a world where education systems are buckling under pressure, Mark AI will offer more than efficiency—it will redefine the role of technology as a catalyst for equity, one graded paper at a time.
