A national digital mock exams afternoon for Year 10 pupils should be held a year before the introduction of online GCSEs to find out if the move would be a “complete disaster”, a leading academic has said.
Speaking at a Cambridge Assessment Network seminar, John Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at the UCL Institute of Education, proposed a plan for what he would do if GCSEs were to go digital in 2025.
He said that a mock held the summer beforehand would allow policymakers to “back out”, if things did not go well.
Professor Jerrim also said that moving to digital exams would be a “logistical nightmare” but that, eventually, education leaders would have to “bite the bullet” and move towards them.
He added that he would initially roll out digital exams in a couple of GCSE subjects and would avoid English and maths, as they were too “high stakes”.
And he said that if digital exams were to be introduced from 2025, then the number of schools taking the National Reference Test - which provides evidence of how GCSE exam performance has changed over time - should be doubled from 350 to 700 schools.
Recent surveys have found that more than half of teachers want online exams, while the exam regulator Ofqual published a three-year corporate plan earlier this month, which said it would support the use of technology in exams.
Speaking at the seminar, which focused on how policymakers can maintain the comparability of results when GCSEs go digital, Professor Jerrim spoke about what he would do if digital exams were brought in in 2025.
He said he would hold a national “mock afternoon” for Year 10s at the end of the GCSE period in 2024 and ask all schools to take part.
He added: “Why are we going to do that? Because we want to make sure every school and every pupil, as far as we can, has had experience of navigating GCSE electronic assessment, so we can work out where the problems are.
“It’s going to help us understand if this is going to be a complete disaster so we can back out one year in advance.”
Speaking about the National Reference Test - an extra test taken by students at some schools to help set standards - Jerrim said this would have to be extended from 2023.
He added: “Frankly, until this happens, digital GCSEs aren’t happening. If the government is serious about this, they do this now, they put their money where their mouth is. Instead of 350 schools, we double it to 700 schools.”
He also said that he would start by avoiding digitising English and maths exams in the first year, adding that they were “too important”.
He suggested digital exams in other subjects, such as geography and history, could be trialled first before adding, jokingly: “I’m going to get in so much trouble.”
Professor Jerrim concluded that politicians would have to accept that there are “going to problems” with a move to digitising exams, and said: “You’re going to have to be brave.”
In the Ofqual’s three-year corporate plan, published this month, the regulator’s chair, Ian Bauckham, said the pandemic had posed questions of “not if, but when and how” greater use of technology and on-screen assessment should be adopted.
The regulator said it planned to work with awarding organisations to support the use of technology and other innovative practices, and would plan to “remove regulatory barriers” if this innovation promoted “valid and efficient” assessment.
The plan was broadly welcomed by education leaders, with Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, calling the current pen-and-paper exam system “hopelessly outdated”.