The experience of cancelling two years of GCSE and A-level exams is understood to have made those in government much more receptive to moving assessment online.
England’s exam boards are cautious about how quickly the shift away from pen and paper assessment can be achieved.
But it can be done, as the experience in these countries with on-screen qualifications reveals:
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Where are online exams taking place?
Wales
On-screen assessments for national tests in Years 2 to 9 were introduced in Wales from 2018. The process has involved 98 per cent of pupils in these year groups taking the online adaptive tests, which include assessments of maths problem-solving and Welsh and English reading comprehension.
Australia
The Australian Council for Educational Research offers a range of online tests in general ability, early years maths and reading, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation for use by teachers in the Australian school system.
Over 5,000 schools use its PAT (Progressive Achievement Test) assessments for pupils from Foundation to Year 10.
New Zealand
In 2020, 58 exam sessions were offered across 21 subjects by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority through the NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) online platform.
Secondary students complete practice activities using the software, a digital device check where they can ensure their software is compatible with the NCEA online platform, and digitised exam papers have been available from 2019 for subjects sat in 2020.
United States
High-stakes college entrance exams are mostly sat online in the US.
Denmark
Denmark was an early trailblazer. In 2009, Danish pupils were given full internet access during their final school exams as part of a pilot.
The first exam assignments in June 2010 were Danish, maths, social science, business economics, marketing and international economics, with English as a foreign language introduced from 2014.
Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa)
Pisa tests - taken by 15-year-olds across the world to measure their scores in maths, science and reading - have been administered online since 2018.
England
Grammar schools and private schools have used online assessments for students sitting 11-plus or 13-plus entrance exams.
Ofqual adviser Robert Coe says that while working at the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) at Durham University, “we provided 11-plus tests to grammar schools and they were mostly done online, and certainly for independent schools, for a while we did the entrance test for Eton - that was an online test and it doesn’t get higher stakes than that”.
He adds that many independent schools use online assessment to administer their entry test.
