Chemical and paper exams may soon be a thing of the past, as UK qualifications regulator Ofqual said it was exploring technology to transform the way GCSE and A-levels are administered.
The regulator’s latest corporate plan says Ofqual will remove regulatory barriers to allow exam boards to study the use of remote assessment, digital delivery and adaptive testing software that adapts exam questions to students’ answers.
Ian Bowcam, chairman of Ofqual, said: “The pandemic rightly catalyzes questions about whether, but when and how to make greater use of technology and screen evaluation.
“All proposed changes must be carefully assessed for their impact on students, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.
School leaders said using exams delivered online could solve security problems and allow exams to continue in blocking conditions in the future.
Jeff Barton, secretary general of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Our current reliance on an industrial-scale pen-and-paper test system with Fort Knox-style security measures for transporting and storing documents is hopelessly outdated and ripe for reform.
“Recent experience with the pandemic has shown how vulnerable it is to unexpected events. If online assessment were available, it may not be necessary to cancel all summer exams for two years in a row.
But Barton and Mary Boasted, joint secretary general of the National Education Union, said Ofqual should seize the opportunity to take a more radical look at the use of high-stakes exams in the English school system.
“Education and proof of what a student has achieved during their time in school and college is much more than showing what can be remembered in an exam at the end of the course,” Busted said.
Ofqual said that adaptive testing could replace the use of multi-level examinations for the GCSE – where simpler documents from the “core layer” are offered to those applicants who are considered unable to achieve high marks.
Adaptive testing involves adjusting the difficulty of a test or exam to suit the student’s abilities. When the student answers a question correctly, he may get more and more demanding questions and vice versa.
“We will know how difficult the questions are, which means that students who take different combinations of questions can be compared and evaluated,” said a spokesman for Ofsted.
Adaptive testing is best for using multiple-choice questions or correct / wrong answers in subjects such as math.
“Although there are no immediate plans to launch adaptive testing, it is important that we carry out this initial research work both from a technical point of view, but also to make sure that we fully take into account the views of students, teachers and leaders,” the spokesman said.
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