There will be “no big bangs” in the move to digital assessments, an exam board leader has said today.
Colin Hughes, chief executive of AQA, told an education conference that it would be important to plan the move to online exams “carefully, nationally and execute steadily over time”.
He added it “should be approached not as a digital revolution, but as a natural assessment evolution”.
Mr Hughes told a Westminster Education Forum conference that the Covid pandemic will be a watershed moment in the move to online exams.
However, he said that it was his strong view that “pens and pencils and paper should retain a large part in our examination system for the foreseeable future”.
Move to digital cannot happen ‘overnight’
He said: “Having been through the past couple of years, most school leaders feel the time has come to stop wondering whether we move at least some of our high stakes assessment on screen and instead start working out how, what and when.”
However, Mr Hughes stressed that “we should not be conjuring this up as some overnight brave new world of digitally transforming the school system”.
He said that “it won’t work that way” and that this “language” could “put people off”.
Adding that it was time to “move on from pondering obstacles” and “start to think through solutions to the inevitable issues”.
Mr Hughes said a key question would be how it will “level the playing field” for all schools and students, as well as how “cramped school halls” will cope with hundreds of candidates on laptops.
Mr Hughes said there was a “long list of potential gains” from digital assessment, all of which needed to be tested during a thorough planning phase.
He said benefits could include “deeper real-time data”, potentially lower costs, a potential reduction in teacher workload and the possibility of getting results out faster.
AQA ‘will not run hybrid’ assessments
Mr Hughes said today that AQA “will not run hybrid” assessments, where the same paper is available to sit online or on paper.
“If we go online with a component, everyone will do it online.”
Ian Morgan, chair of the Joint Council of Qualifications, also told the conference that there was “clearly a logical next step” when it came to digital assessment.
But Mr Morgan said “the logic of the next step needs to fit in the context of those available resources”.
He said that the move to digital assessment “needs to be deliverable, affordable and sustainable”.
He said it was important to be “mindful of the impact” on centres, colleges and schools in terms of “equity of provision and access to the right level of resources”.
Mr Morgan said it was important to ask that if the move is made to online assessment, whether the practical and technology resources exist and whether the “infrastructure” is in place “to allow learners to engage in the most appropriate way”.
He added there were also “socioeconomic challenges” and it was about the environment “in which we all come to be operating”.
Earlier this year it was announced that thousands of students would be taking online tests in GCSE English, maths and science as part of a major new pilot launched by the AQA exam board.
Last week, the chair of Ofqual, Ian Bauckham, said he did not “envisage a world where students sit exams solely on screen” and handwriting is “still an essential part of our education”.
Mr Bauckham, who is also chief executive and director of the Tenax Schools Trust, told the Schools and Academies Show that Ofqual needed to make sure it does “the spadework” on the regulation of exam boards on their use of technology in assessment.
He said the “approach” of the regulator will be “cautious”.
