Sion Private School École Ardévaz Hands Exam Marking to AI Platform Profassist

Teachers at École Ardévaz, a private school in Sion in the canton of Valais, have handed most exam marking to an AI platform called Profassist since the start of the school year, Netzwoche reported on October 12, citing the newspaper 20 Minutes. The school tested the tool in June 2026 and introduced it with the agreement of teachers, pupils and parents.

Profassist works from the model answers and marking scales that teachers supply. On that basis it awards points and grades, comments on each paper and writes personalised recommendations to help pupils close gaps in their knowledge. Teachers can review the results before the corrections are released. The platform also compiles statistics on where pupils struggle, which the school says helps staff target their support.

Director general Alexandre Moulin said the aim is to reduce the workload of teachers and apply assessment criteria more consistently. Ardévaz is not new to the technology: in 2023 it introduced an AI-based learning assistant, used mainly to prepare students for the Maturité, the Swiss upper-secondary leaving exam.

What it means in practice

The experiment has caught attention beyond Valais. A meeting between the school’s management and officials responsible for compulsory schooling in the canton of Vaud is planned, according to the report. Vaud, however, is considering AI mainly to ease certain administrative tasks, and its education department rules out leaving exam marking to AI for now. That split captures the wider question for Swiss schools: whether AI grading frees teachers for more time with pupils, or whether gains in consistency come at the cost of the judgement families expect from a person. Because teachers still sign off every grade, responsibility stays with the school, but how often they change the marks Profassist proposes will be the real measure of trust.

Swiss institutions are writing their own rules for AI, from ten joint guidelines published by Swiss churches to the Federal Council’s priority areas for AI in the federal administration. What to watch: whether Ardévaz publishes data on how often teachers overrule the platform, how pupils and parents rate the feedback, and whether any cantonal school system moves from administrative uses to AI-assisted grading.