Digital exams will help young people develop the skills they need
for the future, a new report by leading exam board AQA says. This
news comes just two weeks after the Government said that, with
the Advanced British Standard, it would consider adopting digital
exams to assess students in innovative ways.
‘Making it Click: The case for digital exams in England’ says
that we should move to digital exams in an evolutionary, not
revolutionary, way.
In the report, AQA is announcing that the reading and listening
components of its GCSE Italian and Polish will, subject to
regulatory approval, be assessed digitally in 2026. AQA is aiming
to continue introducing further components in other subjects at
GCSE and A-level, until at least one of the large entry subjects
(eg GCSE English) is partly assessed digitally in 2030.
Students’ devices will be offline in the exam hall; they will not
be able to search for information on the internet, nor will they
be able to access artificial intelligence tools.
The model for exams hasn’t changed much since AQA, an education
charity that is England’s biggest provider of GCSEs and A-levels,
was founded 120 years ago. Although paper-based exams continue to
be one useful way of assessing students, AQA believes it’s time
to widen the range of media we use.
The case for moving to digital exams is strong. Digital exams:
- allow young people to use their digital skills;
- are better for the environment;
- are truer to the digital world people are growing up and
working in;
- can help students with special educational needs;
- don’t make students worry about handwriting bias.
Longer term, digital exams could be a more engaging way of
assessing what a student knows, understands and can do. For
example, for modern foreign language students, there could be
interactive video and audio with conversations in parks,
restaurants and town centres.
AQA’s polling and focus groups with teachers, students and
parents show that most people welcome the prospect of digital
exams:
- 68% of young people surveyed agreed that digital exams would
be better preparation for future work, education or training;
- 63% of 11-18 year-olds felt comfortable using a computer for
longer than an hour – only 36% felt comfortable using pen and
paper for more than an hour;
- 68% of parents agreed that exams need to move with the
times.
A student who took part in AQA’s pilots of digital exams said: “I
feel like it’s quicker to type my responses rather than write
which gives me more time to develop more ideas.”
AQA has been trialling digital exams for several years and will
continue to do so. We anticipate a system where paper-based and
digitally delivered exams coexist – but not for the same exam
paper or component. Either all students will sit a paper exam, or
all will sit the exam digitally.
, AQA’s CEO, said:
"Technology and change are two constants in education. After all,
we went from quills to fountain pens to biros, and from scrolls
to books. Moving to digital exams is the next step of this
evolution.
"We cannot and should not change the way we conduct exams
overnight. AQA has spent several years trialling and piloting
digital exams and we will roll them out over many years. Our
ambition is that students will sit a large-entry subject – that
means, in our case, hundreds of thousands of simultaneous exams –
digitally by 2030.
"In the meantime, we'll continue to talk to teachers, school
leaders and exams officers about how they want to make these
changes. The benefits are substantial."
