GCSE students could be sitting digital exams within the next three years.
Exam board AQA is aiming for the reading and listening assessments for its GCSE Italian and Polish to be conducted digitally by 2026, subject to regulatory approval, meaning they would be written on a computer rather than by hand on paper. In a new report, the exam board advocated for digital exams to be introduced in an “evolutionary, not revolutionary” manner, hoping for at least one large entry subject such as English to be assessed partially digitally in 2030.
In AQA’s proposals, students' devices would be offline in the exam hall. They would not be able to search for information on the internet, nor access artificial intelligence tools.
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AQA argues digital exams are “truer” to the digital world people are growing up and working in. It adds that they will remove worries about examiners struggling to understand handwriting and be beneficial to those with special educational needs.
AQA also said digital exams could be more engaging than paper-based ones. For example, for foreign language students, there could be interactive video and audio with conversations in parks, restaurants and town centres.
The exam board cited its own polling and focus group data, with 68% of young people agreeing that digital exams “would be better preparation for future work, education or training”. The same percentage of parents agreed that exams need to “move with the times”.
AQA has been trialling digital exams for several years, arguing for 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.
Colin Hughes, AQA's chief executive officer, 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."
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