A curious year for the assessment sector. $25M fines for exam cheating. UK spluttering on plans for digitising school exams. A regulator pacifying angry teachers about exams. An ‘Exam Nation’ book that nearly forgot to mention exams. And definitely not forgetting the never-ending growth and impending car crash of SEN learner assessment needs.
Still curious? Cheating accountants, sweary solicitors, out-to-lunch politicians, dodgy academics - here are the stories of 2024.
January The new year started with a clumsy jumble: the regulator claiming the carbon footprint of a GCSE exam was the same as five wash cycles. In response, I wrote that despite three decades of practice, the sector still struggles to benchmark existing and digital exam delivery costs.
Pearson was the latest exam owner to announce plans for digital school exams - introducing on-screen GCSEs for English starting in summer 2025. Regular readers will know I write extensively about school digital exam delivery.
To prove that assessment is a truly global sector, Iraq was found to have the world's largest number of internet shutdowns in 2023 due to exam cheating. But in more heart-warming news, Japanese rail company let young people ride for free on entrance exam days. The month closed with a huge story: exam behemoth ETS acquiring PSI.
February No stranger to digital services, Estonia were the latest country to digitise school leaving exams this month. In a warning shot to other exam owners, the New York Attorney General’s Office secured a $750k settlement from College Board for selling 2019 student data.
As digitisation permeates the assessment and exam sector, unsurprisingly more stories on (attempted) cyber attacks are reported. February saw an investigation into exam paper leaks hit a dead end, prompting calls for new security measures the following month.
March Juxtaposition of the Year award may have been won in March. AQA announced plans to test how AI can "mark the marker" in GCSE exams. But Ofqual’s chief was then quoted that “We discard pen-and-paper exams at our peril.” Let’s hope someone had a quiet word.
News from Portugal and Ireland signalled that SEN learners, and those requiring better accommodations, are driving digital exam deployments. A pity it took legal challenges for those disadvantaged learners to get equitable access.
I attended the Next Generation Assessment conference in Manchester. Afterwards, I wrote that ignoring digital assessment progress outside of England’s state regulated schools disconnects regulatory guardianship from the people it should be serving.
Why must it require legal action for disadvantaged SEN learners to get equitable exam access?
April The huge increase in exam accommodation requests has been a key feature of 2024. It was reported that some UK colleges have to close completely during exam sessions, due to the constantly increasing resource needs.
UK financial regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, quizzed the ‘Big 4’ audit firms on what it was doing to prevent their staff from exam malpractice. Serendipitously, the Netherlands arm of KPMG was fined $25M for permitting cheating in exams, which amounted to around seven hours of annual billings.
And in a recurring theme raised again in September, a regulator report claimed that only a third of headteachers believed that marking/ grading for school GCSE exams was accurate.
May A story seemingly from 2014 emerged from Japan in May. Waseda University of Japan and local police pressed charges on an exam candidate wearing smart glasses to cheat on an entrance exam. A report from now-defunct England policy group EDSK called for GCSEs to be replaced with ‘digital SATs’ for 14-year-olds. Another year, another set of price rises: in May, the BBC reported that GCSE and A-level prices soared by an inflation-busting 6.4%.
A good news story saw a teenage hero save an invigilator who collapsed in the middle of an exam. And in an unorthodox and bewildering story, a Scottish exam invigilator made the unusual boast that they’ve “Only caught three exam cheats in 25 years.”
Why does an invigilator believe that only catching 3 exam cheats in 25 years is something to be proud of?
June Half way through the 2024 exam sector review, in Devon, England, a school headteacher was banned after he replaced a pupil's exam paper with a photocopy. Africa’s largest exam owner, the West African Examination Council (WAEC), announced plans to eliminate paper-based exams in Nigeria. The National Testing Agency in India came under pressure from concerns over entrance tests. In Greece, half of its public hospital directors failed a qualification exam.
A fascinating research paper was published in June that compared the different cognitive loads in computer and paper-based assessment. And the eAssessment Association held their annual conference in London – I was delighted to be invited onto a panel discussing digital school exams.
July Possibly the strangest story of the year emerged in July. An Australian research study claimed that exam hall ceiling height had an impact on candidate performance. The study was hastly retracted the following month.
A fruity remote proctoring story saw an unregistered barrister fined for swearing during an ethics exam. And in a bellwether of increasing SEN requirements in school exams, it was reported that Scotland’s schools are struggling to hold exams as 8,000 more pupils needed special arrangements.
How do we solve the rapidly increasing problem of schools and colleges being completely overwhelmed with SEN exam delivery needs?
August The ‘silly season’ for news started with a story regarding the use of scraping bots to harvest and re-sell of UK driving tests for profit. In written evidence to a December government transport committee meeting, the Driving Instructors’ Association CEO claimed that government staff were using private social media groups to sell the in-demand test appointments.
A new book called ‘Exam Nation’ perked up the sector in August. Written by an active England secondary school teacher, it was surprisingly very light on providing examples of different assessment instruments to help change the Exam Nation status quo.
September After the summer, the big news story was that the UK Home Office planned an overhaul of its Secure English Language Testing (SELT) regime. Responses from the sector focused on blunting innovation, capacity, and accountability.
Concerns over the quality of school exam marking by examiners re-emerged, which the regulator had already flagged comprehensively over ten years ago. Ironically, Australia media reported that a whole suite of school English exams would be digitised.
Cambridge’s school exam owner, OCR, launched its review of the age 11-16 England curriculum and assessment. As a warm-up act for the future review led by Professor Becky Francis for the Department of Education, it was led by former Secretary of State for Education, Charles Clarke. I wrote that Mr Clarke appeared to have forgotten the considerable digital exam work and piloting by his own office, when he led the Department for Education 20 years ago.
Why did a former Education Secretary omit his legacy in pioneering digital school exams while in office 20 years ago?
October The first day of October saw Cambridge announce they would digitise international school exams in Accounting, Biology, Chemistry, Economics, English, and Physics. They also declared by 2033 to have a digital option for 85% of its high-stakes qualifications. School exam owner AQA continued to explore formative assessment, with a digital numeracy test to solve numeracy issues.
November Following England’s regulator insisting on new exam security measures, in November it emerged that AQA was using injunctions to clamp down on exam paper cheats. Microsoft attempted a similar law suit almost twenty years ago to protect its certification programme, to very modest effect.
The International Baccalaureate, after delivering its Middle Years Programme digitally for many years, announced that the Diploma Programme will commence digitisation from 2026, with all Diploma exams full digital by the next decade.
In a consultation move which may have caused more sector uncertainty, rather than building confidence, Ofqual asked for regulated exam owners to ‘act with honesty and integrity’. This was part of a proposed new Principles Condition, comprising six new proposed principles.
Should we be worried that an exam regulator needs to ask exam owners to 'act with honesty and integrity?
Later in November, England’s exam regulator bemoaned that “the ‘enormous’ investment required to digitise exams wouldn’t make economic sense without wider work to digitise education”. Unfortunately, the media outlet didn’t ask the regulator about cost-benchmarking the incumbent exam system.
English language commentator Michael Goodine noticed this month that Pearson’s Academic Test of English (PTE) has (re)introduced human examiners/ raters to two specific questions. PTE Academic and PTE Home (remotely proctored) are auto-scored for each facet. PTE has been accredited by Ofqual for almost five years, as of December 2024. Pearson’s 2023 Annual Report claimed 1.2M PTE tests delivered, with results delivered in one day, on average.
December Rounding up the year, yet another (re)announcement on digital school exams. This time Pearson claimed GCSE History and Business Studies would be offered on-screen by 2027. In a rare move, delivery numbers were quoted: in 2022, 7,000 GCSE and iGCSE on-screen papers were delivered. In 2023, this has doubled to 14,000, predominantly for GCSE Computer Science. The separate ‘typed response to a paper exam’ delivery was reported as having a compound growth rate of almost 43%. In a parallel development, Pearson’s plans to digitise GCSE English would be delayed until 2026.
I hope you enjoyed this 2024 review! I’m giving BlueSky a try – if you’re already there, give me a follow. Enjoy your holidays, see you in 2025!