Founder · engineering & product
AlaaAbbadi
The engineer and technical developer behind Phloem. Alaa also founded Aceable.site and built the official websites for NXT MUN and BILLMUN.
Cambridge IGCSE · for heads of department
Six teachers. One mark scheme.
One of these is a hope.
You are accountable for marking consistency across your department, for cohort outcomes, and for the quality of every assessment that goes out under your subject’s name. You currently have no instrument that measures any of it.
Free through your first exam series. No contract, no procurement cycle.
Standardisation · 0580/42 · one script, six markers
- 16
- mark spread
- 3
- grades straddled
- 48.2
- department mean
- Moderation
- Cohort analytics
- Scheme-of-work planning
- Cover packs
- Criterion marking
- Pedagogical advice
- Blind standardisation
- Exportable for SLT
- Purchase orders accepted
The problem
You are measured on two things you cannot currently measure.
Marking consistency and cohort outcomes are the two things a head of department answers for. Both are assumed to be under control, and neither is visible. Standardisation happens once a term, in a meeting, over a handful of scripts, and what comes out of it is a shared feeling rather than a measurement. Nobody leaves the room knowing which colleague is severe on method marks.
The data drop tells you a class got 61%. It cannot tell you that forty percent of the marks the year group lost went on three criteria, two of which you could reteach in a single lesson. So reteaching gets sprayed across a topic instead of aimed at a misconception, and the same marks go missing again in the summer.
None of this is a failure of professional judgement. It is the absence of an instrument. Six good teachers marking the same script to the same scheme will still produce a spread, because that is what unmeasured human marking does.
Who in my department is severe on method marks?
No current answer.
Which three criteria cost Year 11 the most marks?
No current answer.
Has every syllabus point been assessed this term?
No current answer.
Would two teachers give this script the same grade?
No current answer.
Six capabilities
What it gives you that nothing else does.
Built for the person who signs off the department.
Moderation
Standardisation, as a measurement instead of a meeting
Send one script to the whole department. Everyone marks it blind. Phloem shows you the spread — who is generous, who is severe, and on exactly which criteria they diverge. That is the chart at the top of this page, and it is the thing your line manager assumes you already have.
- per-criterion variance
- blind marking
- termly drift tracking
Cohort analytics
The gap report your data drop can't produce
Percentages tell you a class got 61%. They don't tell you that 40% of the marks lost across the year group went on three criteria. Phloem ranks the whole cohort's losses by marks forfeited, not by topic, so reteaching is aimed rather than sprayed.
- by class or year group
- ranked by marks lost
- exportable for SLT
Planning
Assessments that land where your scheme of work says they should
Upload the department's scheme of work once. Every assessment built afterwards is mapped to a week and a set of syllabus points, so a teacher joining in January can see what has been assessed, what hasn't, and what is coming.
- week-by-week mapping
- coverage gaps flagged
- shared across the department
Cover packs
A cover lesson a non-specialist can actually run
Someone is off at 7:40am. In under a minute you get a worksheet on last week's content, a fully worked answer sheet, and instructions plain enough for whoever is free period three — whether or not they have ever taught the subject.
- worked answers
- no subject knowledge assumed
- print or project
Marking
The same criteria applied to every class in the department
The engine that marks a student's working criterion by criterion is the same one behind every set your teachers hand back. Method marks survive arithmetic slips. Follow-through is judged against the candidate's own earlier answer. Every mark is appealable, and the appeal goes to the teacher, not to us.
- M / A / B criteria
- follow-through
- teacher has final say
Advice
Somewhere to ask the question you'd ask a good colleague
How do I introduce moles to a class that can't do ratio yet? What board diagram makes refraction land? Which misconception is behind half my class writing this? Ask it, and get an answer with the diagram drawn out, ready to copy onto the board — not a lesson plan template.
- board-ready diagrams
- misconception-first
- knows your specification
Scan to mark · in build
A stack of paper in, a set of grades out.
The workflow was designed around how marking actually happens in a department — on paper, in a rush, the evening before it is due back. Upload is live in beta and mark-back for Mathematics runs end-to-end for early departments; the rest of the pipeline is being finished ahead of your first series.
- 01
Point a phone at the stack
Photograph the pile of scripts, or upload PDFs from the department scanner. No special paper, no QR stickers, no barcodes to print beforehand.
- 02
Pages are matched to students
Phloem reads the names and question numbers and assembles each candidate's script back together, including pages photographed out of order.
- 03
Marked against the key
Every script is marked criterion by criterion against the same scheme — the identical engine across every class in the department.
- 04
Low-confidence marks come to you
Anything genuinely borderline is routed to the teacher for a spot-check rather than guessed at. You review the handful that need judgement, not all ninety-two.
Students don’t need an account. Mark the stack, publish grades, hand back.
A useful control surface
See whether assessment is moving, not whether teachers are online.
A head of department needs operational answers: what has been built, which classes have received it, and how much marking has made it back for review. The example below shows that shape without pretending it is live data.
Example department view
Assessment readiness
One glance at what has been set, reached a class, and come back for review.
- ASSESSMENTS BUILT
- This half term
- 8/10SETS
- CLASSES COVERED
- This half term
- 6/8CLASSES
- SCRIPTS REVIEWED
- This half term
- 164/240SCRIPTS
The arithmetic of a department
The hours aren't going into teaching.
These are other people's numbers, not ours. We have none of our own yet and won't pretend otherwise.
6h 48m
spent testing and assessing students, per teacher, per week.
GL Assessment, Workload Insights (2019)
265 h
the same figure across a 39-week academic year — the equivalent of six-and-a-half working weeks, per teacher.
GL Assessment, Workload Insights (2019)
68%
of teachers say their school could do more to make assessment less time-consuming.
GL Assessment, Workload Insights (2019)
Multiply the first figure by the number of teachers you line-manage. That is the budget you are actually spending on assessment, and almost none of it buys you consistency — because every one of those hours is spent alone.
What we can’t show you yet
Phloem for Departments is in build. We have no usage data, no case studies and no customer logos, and we are not going to borrow anyone else’s. Signing up early is the bridge: run it free through your first exam series, and the numbers you get out are your department’s own.
Safety & integrity
On purpose: what it won't do.
Four limits we designed in, rather than four questions we would rather you did not ask.
It won't overrule you
Every mark is appealable, and the appeal lands with the teacher. Phloem proposes a mark and the reasoning behind it. A teacher who disagrees changes it in one tap, and the change is what the student sees. Nobody's professional judgement is being automated away.
It explains, then moves on
Students get the criterion they dropped, an explanation of the mistake, and another question on it. It teaches through marking — not through open-ended chat. The explanation is tied to the mark scheme, not generated on demand, so what they learn is what the examiner was looking for.
It won't hold your data hostage
Export everything, delete everything, whenever you want. No minimum term, and no data held back to make leaving expensive. If Phloem is worth having it should be worth renewing, not hard to escape. Ask for a data processing agreement and you get one before anything is uploaded.
It won't claim to be Cambridge
Phloem is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cambridge Assessment International Education. It marks against published specification criteria. Every question in it was written for Phloem — no past paper and no published mark scheme has been reproduced.
Pricing
Priced by scope, not per student.
Solo is per teacher. Department and Institution are per subject and per school. Purchase orders and invoices accepted, on your finance office's terms rather than a card form. The figures below are the planned list prices — they only apply once your first series has been marked.
Open for sign-up
Create accountFree through your first exam series. You set the price after.
Departments that sign up now pay nothing until their first series is marked, tell us what it was worth, and get the subject they teach built first. No contract, no procurement cycle to start, and the list prices below are what a department joining after launch would pay.
Solo
One teacher, one timetable.
$199/ month
- Marking across your own classes
- Assessment and cover-pack builder
- Per-class criterion analytics
- Pedagogical advice with diagrams
Department
Most departmentsThe whole subject, moderated.
$1,499/ month
- Everything in Solo, department-wide
- Blind moderation and marker variance
- Cohort gap reports, exportable for SLT
- Shared scheme of work mapping
- Unlimited teachers in one subject
Institution
Every department, one standard.
$7,999/ month
- Everything in Department, across all subjects
- Cross-department outcome reporting
- SLT dashboard and data exports
- Named support and onboarding
Billed monthly or annually against a purchase order. Export everything and delete everything whenever you want — no minimum term, and no data held back to make leaving expensive.
Questions
What a head of department is right to ask first.
The founders
Product depth meets
commercial momentum.
The people building the marking engine and growing the company sit at the same table — and both answer for the result.
Founder · marketing & growth
MohammadYakob
The marketer behind Phloem's reach and growth. Mohammad keeps the product sharp in the market and turns daily progress into sustained attention, partnerships, and momentum.
Phloem marks against published Cambridge specification criteria and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Cambridge Assessment International Education. Every question was written for Phloem — no past paper or published mark scheme has been reproduced.
Bring the department, not just yourself.
Phloem for Departments is in build, and sign-up is open now. Create the department, tell us the subject and the series you’d use it for, and we will tell you honestly whether it is ready for you yet.
No sales call unless you ask for one. No procurement cycle to start.
What you get from us
- One reply from the person who builds it, not a sales sequence.
- Free through your first exam series — you set the price after.
- The subject your department teaches gets built first.
- A data processing agreement before anything is uploaded, if you need one.