No funded national programme for AI-era assessment redesign in higher education

HEPI's 2026 survey found 94 per cent of students using generative AI in assessed work, 12 per cent submitting AI-generated text directly, up from 3 per cent in 2024, and 22 per cent admitting AI-assisted cheating. QAA publishes guidance and is membership-funded in England with no regulatory force. Jisc's National Centre for AI runs a one-year assessment pilot through 2025-26, and the OfS has no funding stream for redesign. More than 140 financially distressed providers each reinvent assessment alone, mid-redundancy. There is no shared assessment bank, pooled viva capacity has not been built, and degrees have no common verification standard.

Degree credibility is a national export and the signal underpinning the graduate labour market. Improvisation institution by institution, under financial distress, produces divergent standards and quiet grade-integrity erosion the sector cannot afford.

An OfS and DfE-funded assessment transformation programme: institutional redesign grants, shared toolkits and assessment banks, and pooled capacity for vivas and interactive assessment, scaling Jisc's pilot and QAA guidance into funded delivery.

// Build together: Counterparty: Jisc/QAA plus volunteer universities pooling assessment banks and viva capacity; OfS/DfE funding is the scaled end-state.

94 per cent of students use generative AI in assessed work while 140-plus distressed providers improvise alone, with no OfS funding stream or shared standard.