Ofqual has announced proposals to regulate on-screen assessment in GCSEs, AS and A levels - but it is unlikely this will happen until the 2030s.

On-screen assessment for all subjects appears many years away, with Ofqual chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham telling Tes this week that high-uptake subjects are unlikely to have it in place for the “foreseeable future”.

It is later than exam boards had planned for - one told Tes as recently as May that it would not be able to run its first set of three digital exams from 2026 as planned, but that rollout should be by 2028 at the latest.

However, the exams regulator has confirmed that this will not be the case.

Today, Ofqual said that exam boards would, in principle, be able to introduce on-screen assessment for up to two subjects each initially.

On-screen assessment in 2030s

However, in an interview with Tes this week, Sir Ian said that it “likely won’t be until the next decade” that students sit digital exams under these plans.

The subjects chosen for the first wave of on-screen assessment must have under 100,000 entries nationally, ruling out the most popular options of maths, English and combined sciences.

Sir Ian confirmed that larger-uptake subjects “won’t be moving to on-screen assessment for the foreseeable future”.

In a letter to Sir Ian today, education secretary Bridget Phillipson backed the “phased and controlled” approach, which would allow space to “build further evidence”.

No more funding expected

Ms Phillipson also stressed that there would be no more money provided: “Any wider use of on-screen exams should not be reliant on additional government funding beyond the investments we are already making.”

She underlined, too, that handwriting remained important: “Some research suggests handwriting can benefit learners in a way that is not replicated in typing because it may contribute differently to cognitive processes, such as memory retention. Writing by hand should therefore remain a core part of students’ learning.”

Ofqual’s consultation will run for 12 weeks, closing on Thursday 5 March.

This will be followed by a technical consultation, time for submissions to be developed and accredited and then placed in schools three years ahead of the first exam, Sir Ian told Tes.

“It’s very unlikely that we’ll see any actual exams happening in schools digitally, beyond what’s happening now, before the end of the decade,” he added.

Pen-and-paper exams

In May, AQA chief executive Colin Hughes told Tes that AQA expected to see “white smoke” from Ofqual in approving its first set of three digital exams in autumn 2026, but that rollout may not be until 2028.

The exam board was seeking approval for one smaller-uptake A level to be assessed digitally in addition to proposals for the reading and listening components of its GCSE Italian and Polish courses, which it had previously hoped to run in summer 2026.

Today, Mr Hughes said that AQA had always “been clear that some exams should continue to be pen and paper across a range of subjects, at least for any foreseeable future”.

But he also said that “digital exams are part of the future” and it was “encouraging” to see Ofqual “consulting on a plan to introduce digital exams over time”.

Moving towards digital assessment

Mr Hughes said that “not introducing digital exams would be a disservice to young people”, but recognised concerns about “fairness, sockets and space”.

“That’s why we believe that digital exams should be introduced in a measured, paced way - beginning with subjects for which digital delivery offers a clear benefit, and where the shift is least disruptive,” he said.

Ofqual’s moves towards on-screen assessment today come after Sir Ian told Tes in 2024 that pen-and-paper exams would be discarded “at our peril”.

Tes asked Sir Ian this week why he had apparently changed his stance.

“At the moment there is no regulation,” he said of on-screen assessment, adding that Ofqual does not want to “shut the stable door after the horse has bolted”.

He added: “If an exam board wants to put in a proposal to deliver a qualification on screen, there are no specific rules...which we can use to quality-assure it, and prevent its entry into the market if it doesn’t meet a high bar.”

Maintaining standards

While he emphasised that pen-and-paper exams will remain “central” to qualifications, once schools have chosen a method of assessment for each subject, students will not be able to change the way they are examined.

Sir Ian said this is because it will be “difficult to maintain standards across the two”.

Ofqual-commissioned research has found that students “generally prefer” on-screen assessment, given they have a preference for typing and find digital exams less stressful.

However, the views of schools, which will be responsible for delivery, are more mixed, according to Sir Ian.

“Teachers accept that there will be a move in a digital direction, but they want it to be very controlled and very steady,” he said.

In visits to schools, teachers told the chief regulator that they “don’t yet have the capacity to get their own heads around what it means and to make sure they can deliver it successfully”.

While Sir Ian has previously called school IT infrastructure “weak”, he would not be drawn on whether the government should invest in it further. This, he told Tes, is “a question for the DfE”.

Tes has approached the department about whether it will commit to further investment.

Minimum expectations for devices

However, the chief regulator insisted that there will be a high bar of standards to clear for digital exams, while exam boards will be quizzed on what research they have conducted and the stability of their online platform.

“We cannot risk a platform seizing up two minutes into an exam. That is massively stressful for everybody concerned,” Sir Ian added.

There will also be minimum expectations for devices, which will be provided either by the school or exam board, to ensure fairness.

“It needs to be introduced in a way which is fair, has students’ interests at heart, is deliverable for schools and colleges and works for everybody in terms of commanding public confidence,” the chief regulator said.

Pearson Edexcel set out a plan at the beginning of the year to take GCSE English language and literature digital from summer 2025, with all of its GCSEs to have an on-screen option by 2030.

Timeline clarity welcomed

Ian Morgan, chief Executive of WJEC, which operates as Eduqas in England, welcomed Ofqual’s consultation on on-screen assessment and the “clarity it provides regarding expectations and timelines”.

However, he said that the exam board “could have been ready sooner if required”.

He added: “The proposed cap of 100,000 maximum entries offers reassurance to stakeholders, particularly schools and colleges, in managing the transition towards greater use of digital assessment and represents a pragmatic way forward.”

Myles McGinley, managing director of Cambridge OCR, called for “responsible innovation”, pointing out that his exam board had “spent years developing on-screen exams that maintain rigour”, adding: “It’s right that Ofqual and the government take the same rigorous approach.”

Meanwhile, Sarah Hannafin, head of policy at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said that IT provision, connectivity and staff expertise are “inconsistent across schools and colleges” and that expanding on-screen assessment without addressing “digital inequalities” risked leading to “disadvantage for some students”.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said in May that some caution was understandable, given the “significant undertaking” to implement digital exams, but that “the potential benefits are massive”.

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