From an assessment science and operational perspective, the core arguments in the opinion piece rely on a fundamental misunderstanding of what assessment is. It is coupled with an outdated view of how modern grading and marking actually works. Here’s what the article presented, and why it (ironically) misses the mark.

1) ‘1 in 4 exam grades is objectively wrong’ The major point portrayed is that a regular examiner’s mark may differ from a senior examiner’s ‘definitive’ mark. Therefore, 25% of all awarded grades are statistically ‘wrong’ and candidates lose out unfairly.

This point relies on a creaky premise that subjective subjects (such as History, English, Art) have a single, perfectly objective, definitive true mark to achieve. They do not.

When evaluating complex, higher-order thinking, there’s a legitimate range of valid academic judgement. If an essay’s true quality sits somewhere between 14 and 16 marks, awarding a 14 isn’t ‘wrong’, just because a senior examiner might awarded a 15.

Equating valid human variance with an ‘error rate’ does a disservice to qualitative assessment and examiners. However, zero variance is available via multiple-choice questions (MCQs). And while experts can craft exceptional MCQs, their reputation is just to test lower-order knowledge and recall. A perceived regression in educational quality and the dreaded dumbing-down call.

2) ‘Grading’s a lottery depending on who marks your paper’ It’s robustly argued that which side of a grade boundary a student falls on is pure luck. That it is dictated entirely by the strictness or leniency of the examiner who ends up being assigned to mark that paper.

Sadly, this argument is becoming tenuous. With digitisation and techniques such as comparative judgement and item-level marking, candidates’ papers are increasingly marked by multiple examiners.

Through on-screen item-level marking, physical scripts are scanned, anonymised, and chopped up by question. Simply, a single exam paper might be marked by ten different specialists. This helps reduce bias, eases cognitive load switching, and keeps examiners aligned to what good looks like.

Dedicating examiners to single anonymised questions and learner answers helps reduce bias, eases cognitive loads, and keeps examiners on track

On-screen marking also uses seed scripts. These are pre-marked, benchmarked answers injected invisibly into an examiner’s queue. If their marking drifts from the chief examiner’s standard on a seed script, the marking system flags for peer or supervisor review. Just like any seeding system, it ensures a highly engineered quality-control pipeline and outcomes. Whole paper grading is not ruined by impaired examiners. It is not a random draw.

3) ‘Grades are only reliable to one grade either way, making exams unfit for purpose’ Because of standard statistical error, high-stakes decisions (such as university admissions) shouldn’t be made on a single exam result.

There is a strong argument for additional insight (admission test, viva exam, personal statement) to support high-stakes decisions. But all test psychometricians know that assessments have a standard error of measurement. No test is perfectly precise. Sadly, the article (and many policy folk) denigrate or ignore alternatives.

Every assessment method has error. During the pandemic, Teacher Assessed Grades were showing to be vastly less reliable across a national cohort. They are highly susceptible to unconscious bias against disadvantaged groups, or kids that teachers really don’t like.

Marking anonymised exam papers reduces unconscious bias.

We’re dealing with systematic bias. Right now, exams remain the most equitable, blind, and scalable mechanism to mitigate this. However, the modern discourse is to consider a basket of digitally-enabled tools to spread and lower the cliff-face risk. Formative assessments to build a composite learner profile, lowering the ultimate pressure on the final paper, while maintaining the rigour, and retaining the trust between learner and exam owner.

4) ‘Report exact marks and a fuzziness metric instead of absolute grades’ Listing a raw mark and statistical range (such as 65 +/- 3), rather than an absolute grade, is not without merit. It is statistically purer, but fails the societal utility test.

Assessment doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it helps university admission officers and employers make high-volume, practical decisions. Getting people-in-post quicker. Introducing a ‘fuzziness index’ would slow admissions processes and trigger an endless, legally-fraught appeals culture. Our society is becoming more litigious, not less. (‘My score means I might have crossed the threshold, so you must admit me’).

A Fuzziness Metric and health warnings for grades displayed on exam certificates create uncertainty. They ruin assessment currency and validity.

Grades act as necessary heuristics or short-hand. But to function at the huge scale, they need to be blunt. Until e-portfolios, digital credentials, and similar granular information are better understood by the aforementioned gatekeepers, grades are still the de facto standard.

On reflection: a tired and outdated outlook that ignores what the (digital) assessment sector is actually doing It’s becoming incredibly tiresome and patronising to young people to continually suggest that their (paper) exam certificate should carry a demeaning caveat of a ‘health warning’. It also sneeringly punches down on expert examiners, who give their valuable free time to the assessment sector.

Better to suggest how the assessment regime needs to change – taking advantage of a digitally-enabled toolkit and high-order subject matter expertise. Slapping a tawdry sticker on a certificate merely shows a paucity of ideas, and a barren understanding of the assessment sector’s art-of-the-possible. Once again, the public discourse is damaged by someone without operational experience of high-stakes assessment programmes. It’s easier to do a gotcha for a cheap headline (and sell their book), than it is to create a better assessment world for learners.

It’s reasonable to say that the school exam system hasn’t evolved with societal norms. Many families will say they are trying to modernise, often unknowingly, an archaic and somewhat arbitrary educational assessment system. It is ironic that an author who claims to find fault with the exam system is actually hindering progress to fairness, validity, and reliability.

It’s time the sector asked itself a difficult question: are our access arrangements legally and morally fit for purpose?

(D)LD is often called the most common neurodevelopmental condition you’ve never heard of as it affects nearly 10% of children. Or two children in every classroom. It is more prevalent than autism or dyslexia. Yet, because it is a ‘hidden disability’, it remains chronically under-recognised in education policy and practice.

The academic toll is devastating. According to the report, (D)LD learners are six times more likely to struggle with reading and spelling. For high-stakes assessments within England’s schools, only 20.3% of pupils with Speech, Language and Communication Needs achieve a grade 4/C or above in GCSE English and Maths. Compare this to 63.9% of all pupils. The data isn’t just about their struggle. It tells the oft-told tale that paper exams are predominantly assessing their language difficulties, not the learner’s subject knowledge and understanding.

Once again, the incumbent paper-based essay system compounds and exacerbates the struggle of affected learners

Why the system is broken

Both JCQ and Qualifications Scotland heavily restrict the role of Language Modifier (LM). An LM doesn’t provide answers. They reword ‘carrier language’ (the exam question’s wording) into simpler terms. This helps learners understand exactly what is being asked of them. The current LM criteria focus on sensory barriers, rather than the complex cognitive-linguistic processing needs that define (D)LD.

To access an LM, JCQ criteria demand a standard score of 69 or below in a standardised reading test of comprehension or vocabulary. This is fundamentally flawed. Standardised reading tests measure decoding. This misses the broader receptive language difficulties central to (D)LD. Consequently, learners who employ compensatory strategies to decode words are denied vital and valid assistance, even though they cannot process the dense, complex language of the exam under timed conditions.

By adhering to narrow cut-offs, the system excludes learners from an arrangement explicitly designed to mitigate language barriers.

What the assessment sector must do Awarding bodies operating in the UK have legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments. Refusing to evolve these criteria risks indirect discrimination. To fix this, the report outlines four steps for exam owners and regulators. I’ve also included an extra for digital exam delivery.

1. Overhaul LM Eligibility Narrow reading and vocabulary cut-offs are unhelpful. Exam owners must accept comprehensive diagnostic assessments, such as the CELF-5. The report also recommends adjusting the threshold to include scores of 84 or below.

2. Acknowledge Clinical Expertise Repeated re-assessments of learners’ chronic, lifelong conditions is a scandal in plain sight. For (D)LD, the condition is unlikely to improve by age five. The exam sector must stop this, and accept existing reports from professional Speech and Language Therapists (SLTs) - clinical field experts.

3. Modify Exam Papers at Source Why wait to fix a poorly worded question in the exam hall? Another dreadful secret is that exam papers are released with inherent problems including language, syntax, missing questions, classism, and print. Part of the reason is that in England, most school exam questions are not trialled before release in a live exam. Questions and papers should undergo linguistic review and modification at source by multidisciplinary teams, including SLTs, and those who teach deaf learners.

4. Recognise (D)LD as a Distinct Category Create a specific eligibility category for (D)LD to prevent these learners from falling through the cracks of generalized frameworks.

5. Provide digitised LM help Delivery of a digital exam can enable a self-serve for (D)LD learners. Delivered over headphones or on-screen, re-wording carrier language is ripe for digitising. You can additionally have an LM off-site, able to handle multiple queries, if the software can’t offer re-wording assistance. And delivered side-by-side with other learners, the notion of being othered is greatly reduced. The technology has existed for decades.

When implemented properly, LMs and modified papers don’t give an unfair advantage; they level the playing field. We now know that the rigidity of legacy paper systems (and dogmatic attitudes) is riding roughshod over equity and validity. A harmonised approach not only ensures every learner is assessed on their capability, not their neurodevelopmental barriers, but also adds to the increasing weight of evidence for deploying digital exams and digital assessment.

But the sector has a different issue. We’re not dealing with software problems. We’re dealing with a problem of trust.

A procurement can lead to a robust platform - great support, perhaps deploying remote proctoring, enhanced ID verification. But none of that answers the underlying question being asked by learners and stakeholders: does this process still feel worth trusting?

Additional Test Security Cannot Fix Bad Assessment Design The mistake exam owners keep making is treating digital assessment as a procurement challenge. Instead, they should be demanding better assessment design. Shining a light on qualifications that show a toolkit of different assessment instruments.

Boorish and dogmatic commentators fall back onto essays – either open book or closed. The reality is that too much lightly supervised assessment no longer accurately represents independent learner thought or practice. The reflexive (digital) administrative response is to bolt on more delivery security—more room scans, tighter browser lockdowns, post and pre-event monitoring. Or just stick with a three hour written essay.

We’ve now reached a point where an exam can be secure, but is increasingly ineffectual at measuring learning or ability. But boorish and dogmatic commentators still say paper exams are the only/ purest way.

Security became a blunt, crude substitute for assessment strategy. We’ve reached a point where an exam can be perfectly secure, but has become ineffectual at measuring learning or ability. Preventing a learner from cheating is not the same as proving they actually understand the learning material, and are able to deploy skills to demonstrate this.

The white lies we tell each other I’ve written before about people becoming extremely uncomfortable with digital exams and digital assessment exposing inherent problems with exam and assessment regimes. Digital rarely creates new issues that haven’t already been overcome. A poor paper exam digitised (‘paper behind glass’) simply scales weak design and outdated processes. Instead of asking if an assessment tool or task can reduce admin, many just ask if the software detects cheating. Digital shines light upon entrenched failures, compromises, and white lies we tell each other in exam and assessment systems.

A reliable platform matters, but it’s not just about the software. That’s just a starter. Over three decades of on-screen delivery at scale has taught us that. Software handles the logistics. But it cannot advise you if an aural exam is a better test of professional judgement. Or if an adaptive exam optimises exam sessions.

Stop agonising over digital – ask what are you trying to measure, and select a (digital) toolkit to answer that question.

The next phase of digital assessment must stop obsessing over the delivery mechanism, and start interrogating what the exam or assessment is actually trying to prove. Better exam owner judgement is sorely needed. If that is lacking, assessment technology will just execute old, flawed assumptions—only faster, larger, and with less room for reflection.

Nurturing trust Smart institutions and exam owners are now building out qualification and certifications with a holistic view. Taking a multi-modal approach to better represent a learner’s capabilities. With a prudent mix of formative and summative assessment, it also acts as a contemporary pragmatic ‘AI-moat’ strategy.

Need to protect your qualifications and exams? Use a multi-modal toolkit approach and also achieve a future-ready AI-Moat.

If you’re an assessment leader, challenge your supplier on this. How much time can be liberated for my team? How quickly can I spin up quals and certs to beat our competition? Can a multi-modal approach help me attract new learners? Reference Clayton Christensen’s ‘Jobs To Be Done’ theory: “What job are you trying to get done that causes you to hire this assessment tool?“

And there’s more upside. Take the dull admin out of assessment and give that time back to impactful front-line activities. Helping learners. Engaging with learning centres. Trialling different exam accommodation techniques. Higher order work. Beating your competition. Don’t forget, suppliers are now establishing agentic AI agents that do much of the heavy lifting.

Want to beat your competition? Get an agentic AI front-end connected to all your mission-critical assessment systems.

The end game is approaching for those that dogmatically cling to trad exam delivery. We’re all trying to spend more time with learners, centres, subject matter experts, higher ed admissions officers, and employers. That liberated time nurtures trust and greater assessment supervision. Isn’t that what we need? When you know your learners, malpractice reduces. This isn’t just about deploying tech. It’s about rejecting a failing system that doesn’t know its learners.

Enhancing assessment design with digital gives us time to nurture better trust and assessment supervision. Isn’t that what we need?

Silly strategy is taking a question out of an exam paper to meet an arbitrary 10% reduction target. And tell ourselves a white lie that it doesn’t really matter. Great strategy enriches the assessment journey that reduces the analogue tangle, but also learns lessons from the digital 1.0 logistical deployments since the mid-1990s.

The sector is already delivering this impending future. I expect dogmatic paper exam traditionalists, who refuse to countenance digital and better assessment design, will be walking back their trenchant opposition. Be kind to them: the headline image is of King Canute.

Schools, institutions and exam solution companies hosting exams for over 200 candidates fall squarely within the law’s scope.

As the deadline approaches, organisations must reassess their emergency preparedness. We’ve already seen an England school recently subject to a threat.

Why are exam venues subject to this law? An exam venue presents a unique vulnerability: many exam candidates concentrated in a single space, mobile devices prohibited, and an expectation of absolute silence prevails. If an attack occurs, transitioning from pin-drop silence to emergency action requires meticulous, pre-emptive planning.

Within exam delivery, to meet the law’s requirements, potentially the most complex challenge lies in emergency messaging. If the exam venue comes under attack, the exam administrators must instantly differentiate their communication to distinct audiences.

When a threat emerges, wouldn’t it be helpful to have an on-screen message for candidates, tailored to their part of the exam room?

Invigilators need immediate, actionable alerts to manage the room; exam candidates require calm, authoritative instructions to prevent a stampede; and external stakeholders, such as guardians and parents, must be managed via separate channels. For example, to prevent a frantic convergence on school gates, shared walkways, and car parks that could obstruct blue light/ emergency services, or enable secondary attacks.

How should exam centre providers update their processes? Operationally, exam organisations need to embed Section 7 of the UK Home Office’s guidance into their protocols. Within education, this focuses heavily on the ‘Guide, Shelter, Communicate’ maxim. Invigilators and exam administrators must Guide candidates to pre-identified safe routes, without triggering mass panic. If evacuation is compromised, they must offer Shelter, with mechanisms to lock down the exam hall dynamically and quietly.

Critically, Communicate is key to successful incident management. The digital exam and assessment community is uniquely placed to help. Test delivery software should provide functionality for on-screen messaging that can be displayed to directly advise the candidate of the situation, instructing them to leave the session. The exam is paused at that precise moment, and can be re-started from exactly where the candidate left.

The digital exam community offers step-change help to comply with Martyn’s Law

Additionally, the test software can be geo-specific – advising candidates at different parts of the exam room to depart via different exits, for example. This tailored and discreet messaging is yet another benefit of digital exam delivery. Electronic exam rosters can also be accessed quickly to ensure everybody is accounted for.

Thankfully, invigilation and proctoring have become much more professionalised in recent times. But those controlling access and managing exam cohorts must ensure they are aligned with UK Security Industry Authority (SIA) standards, support, and guidance, and that people are demonstrably competent. Otherwise, the SIA can take enforcement action to address non-compliance.

So this only applies for sessions with more than 200 candidates? The majority of education and exam settings only require the Standard Tier provision. While the threshold for Standard Tier is 200 candidates, exam institutes and service companies should be mindful to align their processes for lower candidate volumes.

The digital exam delivery community must use this opportunity to revisit all delivery, not just those events with over 200 exam candidates.

Isn’t there an Enhanced Tier for over 800 candidates? Education institutions are exempt from the Enhanced Tier. The Standard Tier applies.

What should the exam community do? In the run-up to April 2027, here are ideas for some stakeholders.

1) Exam Centre Providers: Scout venues for layouts and evacuation protocols. Secure evacuation alternatives to anticipate a secondary attack. Consider implications for separate accommodation rooms. Train staff to ensure compliance.

2) Test Software Companies: Build functionality for session interruption and candidate notification in case of an attack. Note requirement for differentiation of notifications, depending on candidate/ workstation location.

3) Exam Owners: Ensure candidates are advised on what to do in the event of an attack, as part of their exam on-boarding and familiarisation process.

In the chase for clicks and ratings, celebs are platformed and shape public opinion. Mostly, the celebs are sciolists. People pretending to be knowledgeable and well-informed, but with superficial understanding. Fake it ‘til you make it.

Some deal in Epistemic Trespassing. This is when someone holds inherent expertise in an unrelated field, and then claims and acts as though they have it in another. Comedy actors claiming to be education and assessment experts, for example.

Overall, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect. Self-interested celebs over-estimating their knowledge and competence. They lack deep-sector expertise, don’t recognize their incompetence, and their confidence becomes over-inflated.

It used to be Rent-a-Quote people. Self-appointed guardians of the public good. But the media landscape now reveals surprisingly well-funded, multi-channel pressure groups and campaigns, often backed by the retention of specialist legal counsel and PR companies.

Who or what are these celebrities protecting? It’s not learners locked out by paper exams Examine how these recent campaigns get their cash. Whose interests do they protect? It’s certainly not learners locked out by paper assessment. Ed-tech commentator Richard Taylor calls this, ‘The luxury belief problem...people wealthy and well-connected enough to absorb the consequences of their own stated positions.’

The backdrop is a nascent anti-edtech movement. Activists that have a financial interest in holding back evolving societal norms, maintaining the status quo, denying a voice to those who deserve equity and accessibility. This means the assessment sector’s authority is being constrained.

“Activists with financial interest are constraining the assessment sector’s authority”

These issues have recently converged and snowballed recently with exam malpractice/ cheating articles in the HOELT English exam procurement process. One article wheeled out a Member of the UK House of Lords (formerly a Culture Secretary). He mis-guidedly conflated a Covid-era Zoom speech with high stakes exam delivery. The Lord was made to appear poorly briefed, self-congratulatory, and indifferent to the on-the-ground causes and impact of exam malpractice. Ofsted’s former head also entered the debate.

“Poorly-briefed (former) politicians, leaning on personal anecdote, damage the debate with their lack of curiosity about locked out learners.”

Those in power (and those who yearn greatly to return) too easily forget that exam malpractice is a stubborn problem, regardless of delivery mode. It’s neglectful to say ‘keep things as they are’ when evidence and investigations show us otherwise. Lazy comment, by sciolists and those once in the public eye, obfuscates the debate. They latch onto matters where their superficiality betrays them. They refuse to be modest with their perceived wisdom, lack the curiosity to consider those learners who are locked out. and fall back on their singular experience, often lathed with a populist theme.

“Not challenging superficial statements means we lock-out learners we’re supposed to be serving. Lazy paper assessment nostalgia is inequitable, harmful, and wrong.”

I understand why many respected assessment sector experts want no part in the debate. Afraid of being made to feel small or stupid by those supposedly more learned. Bemused by dilettantes who sniff at learner equity and accessibility. Keep out of the headlines. Don’t disturb clients. Take the easy life.

The assessment sector needs communicators and figureheads that other domains cherish. For example, advocates in technical domains such as Tim Berners-Lee, Alice Roberts, and Maggie Aderin-Pocock are recognisible to the mainstream media.

Hats off to the GC with her Main Character Energy and 2.3M Insta followers for getting people to talk about qualifications. Because the Department of Education (83k on Insta) has nowhere near her reach. The GC gives you headlines. A junior minister is press release fodder.

What can the assessment sector do to re-gain authority and drive change? Support your trade bodies. Speak up at conferences. Build client advocacy. Input to consultations, even when there’s no revenue available. Tailor decades of case study evidence, and reach different stakeholders. State the benefits again and again. Be coherent on fast-moving solutions, such as agentic AI. Get campaigning. Use endorsement with social media reach. Assessment leaders: set the agenda and be the voice of your sector.

When you next read about a celeb wading into the exam and assessment sector, think about their motivation, and who’s bankrolling their campaign. The innocent days of resting actors just keeping their name in the daily papers to get that next TV series are long gone. Be vigilant and speak up.

So you’d expect me to say, ‘They should get a dedicated digital assessment system’. Which is true today. But tomorrow may see a very different answer.

Mis-matched learning systems used for exams can be a muddle - never designed for the rigorous demands of authentic summative assessment. The LMS/ VLE is the beating heart of many institution’s digital teaching environment. But it’s been oversold. Shoehorned into handling high-stakes, summative exams. The result? An overreach. Stifled innovation. Flaky exam security. And a clunky candidate experience.

An LMS groans at thousands of concurrent users typing or hitting ‘submit’ simultaneously. Those who use typed answers within high-stakes on-line exams know this. An LMS making occasional calls to a shared server is totally unsuited for high stakes exams.

Evolution for digital assessment, or something else? The assessment sector continues to navigate turbulence. Distressed procurement, imperfect choices, the perceived threat of AI, managing and sweating systems. This is compounded when admins still use quasi-analogue workarounds and processes meant for paper exams. Still working with spreadsheets?

The use of agentic AI radically changes the conversation. What if you (as an exam administrator) had one screen, type a prompt, and see your system setting up and delivering an exam session? An agentic AI system’s ability to parse multi-step goals, source data, create a prompt, and run task executions for the whole exam sector are almost upon us. We’re already seeing it deployed across item production, grading, and remote proctoring.

A paradigm shift – when agentic AI does the heavy lifting it means that the system (composed of AI agents) can decide actions, make reasonable assumptions, and decide with minimal intervention or supervision. Exam owner staff currently have to wrangle complex systems, juggling with multiple integrations, and shoe-horn manual/ analogue processes into a digital 2.0 world. Think of agentic AI as a problem solver. It makes decisions, takes actions, and can adapt to changing circumstances.

Here’s an example. Set up an exam session for a specific certification, delivered to a specific cohort, at a particular time. An agentic AI system could take that objective, and deconstruct it into stages, performing those stages by itself across multiple tools and systems. Such as an item banking tool, certification management system, test delivery software, remote proctoring system, candidate ID verification portal, examiner tracking system, etc.

The agentic AI will verify its progress, and continues until the objective is met, or arrives at a problem. It harvests (internet) data, interrogates and creates files, executes code, sends notifications, updates exam window capacity, corrects its own work, and fixes mistakes. And the exam administrator periodically checks in, without needing to manually intervene at almost every point, as they do today.

Agentic AI makes assessment supervision easier? AI is challenging the assessment sector to ramp up assessment supervision. Remember: assessment only holds currency if it is supervised and trusted. The huge irony is that agentic AI could liberate exam owner resources away from system juggling, and towards coherent supervisory activities.

This would be a game-changing leap for exam owners and awarding bodies. Much of exam production is workflow and processes. Agentic AI is great at this. Reducing the cognitive load of switching across all those mission-critical static systems, and risk of human error. No chance of a missed spreadsheet upload, or clumsy copy/paste.

The exam administrator is liberated to do higher value work. Nurturing learner centres. Sourcing and keeping examiners. Designing out malpractice opportunities. Making better, authentic, supervised assessments.

Exam owners must demand these efficiencies from suppliers. What does this mean for software and services companies serving the exam sector? Procurement changes. Empowered exam owners. Learners benefit from fewer human-cause errors and greater accuracy. Assessment currency and confidence will improve. The AI threat is flipped.

With apologies to the late Clayton Christensen, it’s time we stopped asking the LMS to do a job it was never hired for. The days of stitching together multiple-managed systems, (or using a compromised LMS), to deliver high-stakes exams are numbered.

Digital assessment and exams are at risk of becoming politically toxic. Not because digital is bad, but because they’re often badly explained by the sector, with weak and obscure advocacy. What’s missing? Digital exam stories that compete with paper exam stories, and feel human.

What should be a debate about assessment quality and true accessibility, mutates into one about control, surveillance, dumbing down, and restriction. All negative. Once tarred with that brush, accusations can stick, and when a narrative is established, facts struggle to dislodge it. Political kryptonite.

When the digital exam story becomes one of control, surveillance, dumbing down, and restriction, baseless accusations from paper evangelists can stick.

Mainstream and social media continues to erode sector trust with headlines such as “digital divide” and “AI is breaking assessment”. Isn’t it time we had balanced coverage? Digital needs to be the “fixer” of assessment ills, giving comfort and assurance, enabling stakeholders to tell their truth on digital exams.

Digital needs to be portrayed as the ‘fixer’ of paper assessment ills.

Too many business leaders and marketers take the path of least resistance, the easy option. A conference selfie. A product webinar led by whizzy features seen by tens of viewers. White papers lightly circulated, never seen by decision makers. Non-revenue bearing ‘evangelists’ with nothing insightful to say. Futile. The sector could lose the public information battle on digital exams before it realises it’s in one. You can’t short-cut the art of persuasion.

Too many activities slow the cause. We need to win people over, not do what’s easiest.

Too many suppliers shy away from true, sustained engagement, preferring to stay in the safe, collegiate warm bath of familiar conferences and anodyne LinkedIn posts - lest they ‘offend’ a customer, prospect, or shareholder. Poorly designed websites hiding boiler plate case study PDFs. Designed-by-committee uber-niche conference presentations, so removed from the mainstream they could be legitimately described as underground. Playing to the gallery, not over-coming objections.

Digital exam advocacy is currently hidden in poorly optimised websites, unseen webinars, and uber-niche conferences. How much time and money is wasted on effort that nobody sees?

Why should the sector care? The consequences of not having a true voice and differentiating are multiple. Me-too products that lead to commoditisation (an investment red flag), price-driven procurement, service enshittification, technical debt, and recruitment issues.

The sector must acknowledge public fears rather than dismissing them and translate sector benefits into everyday wins. How about university place offers based on real grades, not ‘halo and horns’ biased guesstimates? Or making better and quicker learning interventions?

Paper exam stories are emotional, human, and easy to grasp. They’re told through nostalgia and ‘tradition’, with a sprinkling of platitudes, that people can relate to. Media and policy folk simply can’t relate to digital exams: only their paper exam lived experience at school and university.

Many people simply can’t relate to digital exams and assessment– it’s not their lived experience.

How do we take control of the digital exam story? Create some tension to give people a reason to care. They see paper exams as the safe, reliable good guys. Digital is the threat. ‘Big Tech’. ‘Too much screen time’. ‘Won’t somebody think of disadvantaged students’. ‘Celebs hate it’.

Flip the narrative. Show and tell the paper-based problems that blight learners and educators. Show digital shining a light on every area, building trust across stakeholders. Make decades of compound evidence on digital exams and e-assessment more accessible in different ways, tailored to reach the different stakeholders.

And have faith that digital will be on the right side of history. Ignore those who choose to cling to the past with confirmation bias, locking learners out of equity they deserve.

Given how much vocational assessment has been digitised for decades, and we have a nascent route-map for school exam digitisation, shouldn’t V Levels be digital by default? What an opportunity to showcase what already works, and the proven benefits that digital provides.

Use proven digital assessment tools, and design V Levels as digital first from the start.

This is a rare moment for V Levels to show the (digital) way – improving assessment for everyone. Designing digital-first V Levels can provide a playbook on how school exam assessment can evolve to a digital-enabled future.

It’s interesting that the BBC’s coverage showed a stock image with learners using VR headsets. That tech is proven in medical education, it’s not bleeding edge. And of course, most of the coverage shows pen and paper images! The good news is that the regulator already approves a multitude of digital assessment instruments. I’ve written about this before – England’s use of digital exams and digital assessment at scale is hiding in plain sight.

England’s post 16 qualification landscape with A, V, and T Levels.

But here’s a secret - few people know that the regulator actually codifies what assessment instruments are used for each qualification. How about V level designers taking proven digital best-of-breed instruments to create better qualifications? Accessibility designed in from the start? Boost learner equity immediately without having to wait for field-tested tech?

Sadly, there’s a problem. And it’s called credibility. Too many times, policy and education leaders finger wag and patronise about making vocational qualifications more robust and rigorous. They totally miss the point and come across as sanctimonious. The constant churn and introduction of new vocational qualifications, to keep pace with the evolving sector, does not play well at all with the conservative academic arena. One is tuned-in to the demands of employers. The other is a bastion of tradition, hoping to keep things simple for university admission officers.

Policy folk, lobbyists, and blow-hards deride or ignore vocational, repeating the tropes that ‘vocational is too easy, just coursework and simple to cheat, not credible’. And policy folk do themselves no favours by demanding ‘past exam papers‘ for V Levels. Once again, a lived experience of A Levels and university degrees with paper exams in a hall is a flimsy foundation for determining robust and progressive (digital) assessment policy.

Derision and nose-holding is often smeared on assessment which isn’t high-stakes paper exams in a hall – how will V Levels be different?

So, are V Levels doomed because of the vocational sector’s constant evolution? The churn often means educators try in vain to keep mastering different assessment instruments. The vocational subject content often can’t keep pace with the changing assessment process. Too much training becomes embroiled in tailoring assessment to frameworks, rather than teaching the learning material. Digital done properly should alleviate the educator’s and learner’s cognitive overload. The quest for parity with A Levels is laudable, but attitudes need to change, not just acceptance of digital’s omnipresence.

Parity across pathways is a laudable goal – but attitudes need changing, not just qualifications.

The government V Level announcement should have included reference to contemporary assessment design. Not just digital-first, but an assessment regime that is accessible, fair, and transparent with the input of the country’s best assessment designers and psychometricians. It’s encouraging that the regulator is active on reviewing qualification design, to expedite creation and delivery in streamlining existing processes and building better ones.

A demanding roll-out timetable for V Levels should light a fire under exam owners – they need to solve the puzzle of why high set-up costs and lengthy implementations continue to be barriers to qualification development and delivery. Workforce innovation is rapid. V Levels need to match not just the speed to market, but also give employers comfort that the qualifications are modern, contemporary, and are credible. Hopefully ultracrepidarians showing the Dunning-Kruger effect, who deride vocational assessment and hold their noses at anything but paper exams, will be sun-setted.

‘How can we be confident about the exam tech world...tech folks make you feel ancient, like Yesterday’s Folk...we’re going to have to change how we teach and prepare learners for exams...that are being created without us...it’s knocking everybody’s confidence – some of us are almost cowering and quivering in a corner.’

Not holding all the facts? Awarding bodies, suppliers, regulators, and many trade bodies often feel they’re walking on eggshells discussing digital assessment. It’s generally civilised and informed, usually within a broad accommodating arena. But in the wider world, we’re never far from quarrelsome and combative participants, often holding light appreciation of operational facts and successful deployments. These participants are actively holding back progress and benefit to learners.

Nobody wants to feel they’re being left behind - as yesterday’s men or women.

Seeking comfort in certainty I’ve witnessed social media attempts to demonise the digital exam sector, offering polar opposite views, rapidly becoming bitter, personal, and unsavoury. This ‘affective polarisation’ stirs disapproval of those attempting positive change. It’s also compounded by ‘Complexity Phobia’ - when people feel revulsed by case studies, advocacy, incontrovertible evidence and facts, that challenges the position that provides easement and comfort to them. Alternative facts, if you prefer!

As the debate is revealed, newbies can be discombobulated, shook out of their ideological comfort zones. Conflating digital exams with childrens’ social media use. Ignoring learners locked out by paper delivery, because it threatens (their own) penmanship and calligraphy. And attempting to falsely cite neuroscience claims of paper’s superiority. They are seeking comfort in certainty: the status quo. A black-and-white world. Nuance and understanding is seen as obfuscation or weakness. Their opinions stagnate, are weaponised, and become tribalised. Unfortunately, being civil, and agreeing to disagree, appears passé at the moment. And it’s compounded by certain LLMs telling you you’re right, even when you’re wrong.

Unwilling to improve equity, access, and fairness? Arguments tend to be trenchant and aggressive on money and capacity. I’ve written about both before, but who do the naysayers think is currently paying for all the paper exams? And why are they unwilling to improve equity, access, and fairness? Their often belligerent response tells you more about themselves than the (paper) hill they wish to die upon. Simplicity is elevated, subtlety is trashed, and complexity denounced.

A belligerent social media condemnation of digital assessment tells you plenty about attitudes towards equity, access, and fairness.

The sector needs to calmly and quickly debunk those who know and understand little about exam production, delivery and the digital exam sector. And who also absently forget the learners currently locked out by paper delivery.

Occasionally, strong debate facilitates truth. It can be done. By focusing on learners, their lack of agency, diminished voice, and their every day struggles to engage with paper assessment. The enlightenment that digital exams are all about greater equity, transparency, and certainty can be uncomfortable, but is powerful and potent.

Bringing everyone on the digital journey Just as compassion and empathy have a role in supervising serious assessment, a little more understanding to bring everybody on the digital journey is sorely needed. The haranguing of so-called ‘Analogue Men’ or Mr Angry can be unhelpful. Slamming neighbouring countries for digital political point scoring doesn’t help learners or educators. It’s tempting to mock ignorance: but again, that doesn’t help learners. We don’t need to hold the regulator’s feet to the fire on the speed and cadence of digital. But ensure they are accountable, transparent, and not do anything weird.

Most educators don’t want to rule the world. They just want to run their classes well and help their learners. So advocates and suppliers for digital exams need to marshall their arguments much better. At the moment, digital refuseniks are buying candles while you’re pushing lightbulbs.

Digital exam refuseniks are buying candles, while you’re pushing lightbulbs.

Digital is here to stay Sector advocates need to give operationally-driven, learner-focused responses to the naysayers. Yes, things will go wrong with humans and technology. But to misquote the song: we’ll still be here in the long run. No serious exam professional is rolling back from digital exam creation, delivery, and certification. Unfortunately, we live in times when even lollipop men and women have to wear body cams, for fear of abuse. Hopefully it’ll never come to that at an e-assessment conference!

Why is a licensure programme necessary? When regulation fails and vocational responsibilities have not been discharged, habitual problems emerge. Government brings the vocation to account, rebuilding public confidence, and renewing the ‘social contract’. Some academics argue that licensure programmes are unsung because the UK places little value on skills, preferring knowledge recall and demonstrating understanding. A 2017 paper by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) claimed around one in five UK employees required an occupational licence. A proportion they claim ‘probably doubled’ since the millennium.

Licensure is common in North America. Almost every job domain in every state has a licensure programme, typically underpinned by a high-stakes exam, with a license subject to periodical renewal.

What does licensure consist of? For the UK, there’s no hard-and-fast rule of what licensure is. Not evey license means an high-stakes exam. Typically, it can be ‘normal’ qualifications, work experience, and assessments of various kinds. In certain instances, it can include non-cognitive tests, such as health and financial/ criminal background checks. The table below shows the difference between licensure and holding a vocational/ trade registration or certification.

Isn’t licensure just about making people take more exams? No. For example, following the pandemic, Canada’s medical sector grappled with the effectiveness of such assessment to provide licensure. Research papers have indicated that a graduated licensure programme can effectively maintain competence, compared to a singular exam. Similar to the graduated driver license, proposed in Northern Ireland to reflect a similar scheme in the Republic of Ireland.

Is licensure just a money-making exercise? Properly supervised assessment should uphold the social contract across an occupation, guarding and benefiting society. Licensure can be thought of as a wrapper around which a number of regulator-approved assessment instruments can function. However, the IEA document argues that licensure can reduce competition, raise prices and excludes many competent people from entering occupations, without significantly improving delivery quality. It also cliams licensure can be self-serving, hiking pay to excessive levels not attracted to similar non-licensed jobs.

Is licensure globally standardised? Absolutely not! Despite the game efforts of bodies such as ENIC-NARIC to gain cross-border qualification recognition, it is a fluid, complex area. For example, dental hygienists are currently licensed in 20 European countries, tour guides are licensed in 12, while farriers (who shoe horses) are licensed only in Czechia and the UK (via the Farriers Registration Council and the 1975 Farriers Act).

For example, the number of regulated professions across Europe varies widely: Czechia has 365, France 254, Germany 169, and even Liechenstein has 174. Each typically requires a post-secondary school diploma lasting four or more years.

Why doesn’t the UK license other trades and occupations? It does! The UK’s Regulated Professions Register recognises 281 professions, with just over half of the professions subject to license. Doctors in England have been regulated in one form or another since the 16th century. CITB’s Health, Safety and Environment tests act as a proxy ‘site license’, as part of a requirement to obtain a quinquennially renewable scheme card. The Gambling Commission’s Personal Functional Licence is a pre-requisite for UK casino workers.

Should we expect more licensure in the UK? The Office of National Statistics claims there are 5.6M people (a quarter of UK workers) employed in professional occupations. The UK’s awarding sector is turbulent – pivoting delivery through the pandemic, grappling with apprenticeship changes, and navigating Government-owned qualifications. Exploring licensure opportunities can be a new growth driver, firming up CPD propositions, and providing the best organisations (membership/ awarding/ trade bodies) a new opportunity to become the voice of their sector. Rather than just requiring a ‘lie-sonss’ for officialdom!

But what signal does this give to the wider assessment community? Bluntly bailing on remote invigilation could appear short-sighted, and smack of panic when faced with on-the-ground realities. Could this decision hold back ACCA’s learner growth? Listening to learners, there’s no singular way that works for everyone.

There are many excellent examples of remote invigilation deployments; a blessing for many under-served learners, who can now access exam sessions. So, it’s not a problem with tech or AI. It’s a problem of supervision. Any worthy assessment or exam must be supervised.

This isn’t a tech or AI problem. It’s an exam supervision problem

Trading at £250M with 50% revenue growth in the last 10 years, ACCA should be more than adequately resourced and skilled to manage the subtleties of the markets it serves. It is surprising to read that solution providers seemingly cannot support their needs. This isn’t the first time that sub-optimal solutions have hampered ACCA. 15 years ago, they attempted to partner with Summit Consulting for their computer-based testing - an ill-fated and embarrassing decision for all concerned. Clearly the ‘abandon’ decision wasn’t taken in haste, but was it the right decision?

Realistically, we should expect a pathway for a controlled, re-introduction of remote invigilation, with service caveats. But how could remotely invigilated exams be re-introduced? Here are five work-streams to make it happen.

1) Resource a Target Operating Model that reflect security realities The assessment sector is caught in a paradox – delivering defensible, standardised ‘fair’ exams against a pincer movement of escalating accommodation requests and assessment instruments of variable reliability. Better exam owners are moving towards a target operating model with a variety of supervised multi-modal assessment instruments – including the best of digital with AI. It’s a pragmatic evolution of their assessment palette, and aids risk mitigation to prevent malpractice.

2) (Re)Design qualifications for a diverse candidate community Too often, exam owners fail to have representation from the learners they serve, and the countries in which they live and work. Often, this means a ‘Western’ view of malpractice is very different to that in other countries. Put simply, some cultures expect ‘help’ to facilitate an exam pass, which often-times they are happy to pay for. What a westerner sees as plain cheating, other cultures see as helping a family member to educate themselves out of a poor situation. Qualification design needs to recognise this.

3) Engage constantly and consistently with the e-assessment sector: The sector is genuinely global and rapidly evolving. Exam owners must stay engaged with the debate, not dipping in and out of conferences every two or three years. When exam owners are not actively contributing to progress the debate and sector, it means the boardroom are off-the-pace, and not on top of their brief.

4) Reject and call out poor service encounters – The sector needs to do a better job in removing clunky service in the name of security. For example, using a laptop camera to security sweep a room remains a poor solution. Instructing a learner to prep their own exam room, rather than turn-up-and-sit-down, is still a big ask. The intrusion upon home intimacy is often an unspoken cultural issue. For example, the acceptance of a second camera for remote delivery, via a smartphone, has only just become accepted practice.

5) Explore Digital ID for exam candidates: An emotive topic, but off-the-shelf solutions to validate candidate identity are mainstream and can be integrated with test centre solutions.

So are ACCA correct for abandoning remote exams? Here are some opposing arguments:

YES Confidence in qualifications is everything. High-stakes at large scale still eludes remote invigilation at the moment. The decision provides breathing room to consider qualification re-design, and a more diverse basket of assessment instruments.

NO Removing remote invigilation removes student choice. ACCA need to be fully engaged with the market, constantly reviewing market solutions, and re-working their management of suppliers. Remote invigilation helps professionalise the sector, helping to greatly expose and prevent malpractice.

Exam owners, solution providers, and trade bodies must collectively do better

To abandon remote invigilation requires operational heavy lifting, but also significant reflection by management. Exam owners must actively and continuously engage with the sector to avoid future ‘rug-pulls’. Solution providers must do a better job in evidencing their continuous improvement, and understand their customers far better. Trade bodies should be able to offer exam owners a ‘safe space’ to help validate and underpin their choices. Otherwise, the sector will struggle to show that they are safe custodians of assessment – restricting growth and learner choices.