Launched in 2025, Step Pro and Step AI are Learnship’s two new professional English language assessments. Their major innovation: the deep integration of artificial intelligence, delivering even more reliable, impactful, and scalable results.

Assessing language proficiency has become essential to ensure seamless communication within organizations. Depending on the objective, expectations vary: detailed accuracy and feedback for high-stakes roles, cost-efficiency for large-scale deployments, speed for recruitment processes.

Over the years, the Baseline suite, including Step, Step+, and Step+ Auto, has become a trusted benchmark for more than 2,000 companies worldwide. Today, Learnship is taking language assessment further by leveraging the best of AI to deliver faster, smarter, and more cost-effective testing solutions.

AI: An Integral Part of Baseline Since 2019

“AI has always been part of Baseline’s DNA,” says Mykola Liushnenko, Product Manager for Assessments at Learnship. “While we continue to offer trainer-led evaluations, we first integrated AI into our speaking assessments in 2019, providing companies with a fast, scalable, and cost-effective alternative to traditional methods. Since then, we have continually enhanced our AI models.”

Today, the Speaking section of Learnship’s assessments automatically evaluates all key criteria traditionally assessed by human evaluators (including oral reading ability, communicative effectiveness, fluency, pronunciation, grammar, and topic development) instantly. Even more impressively, the correlation with human raters has reached 80%, a remarkable achievement considering the inherent subjectivity of oral evaluations — even between two human assessors.

Step Pro and Step AI: AI-Scored Writing Assessments Aligned with the CEFR

Building on the success of our speaking assessments, Learnship is introducing Writing, a brand-new section fully graded by AI, into its evaluation offering.

Learners complete a real-world writing task, such as drafting a professional email, designed to assess seven key sub-skills — grammar, vocabulary, text organization, and more — aligned with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). The answer is instantly graded by AI based on strict CEFR criteria. As with other sections, results are available instantly and included in a comprehensive evaluation report.

Unmatched AI Reliability for Language Assessment

Learnship designed a proprietary AI agent capable of scoring written responses using internally developed band descriptors aligned with CEFR standards.

After extensive real-world testing and more than 60 refinement iterations, the AI achieved an unprecedented 92% correlation with expert human evaluators in writing assessments.
This outstanding result proves that AI-driven evaluations can reliably mirror human judgment — ensuring reliability, scalability, and fairness, even for critical and high-stakes assessments.

Will AI Ultimately Replace Human Evaluators?

At Learnship, we firmly believe that the human element remains irreplaceable.

That’s why all our solutions — from our assessments to our e-learning platform and intercultural workshops — can integrate trainer-led support where it matters most.
We are convinced, however, that artificial intelligence is an essential enabler, allowing organizations to save valuable time on systematic tasks, such as language level evaluations based on CEFR criteria. There is room for both — depending on your expectations and objectives.

This is why we now offer a full range of Business English assessments, with two new additions:

• Step AI: Covers all four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening) in 45 minutes. Fully AI-graded — ideal for instant, scalable, and cost-efficient results.
• Step Pro: Covers all four skills (Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening) in 45 minutes. Combines AI scoring for writing skills with expert human evaluation of speaking skills — offering greater precision for high-stakes situations.

We also continue to offer fully synchronous, trainer-led evaluations for companies that require the highest degree of personalized assessment.

One thing is certain: Artificial Intelligence will continue to drive business performance — and at Learnship, we’re here to help you leverage its full potential.